


Advent Calendar 2015

by Hotaru_Tomoe



Series: The English job [14]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Advent Calendar, Angst, Bondlock, Established Relationship, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Kidlock, M/M, One Shot Collection, Potterlock, Retirementlock, Rimming, Teenlock, Virgin Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-04 08:49:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 33,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5328038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hotaru_Tomoe/pseuds/Hotaru_Tomoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exactly what it says on the tin: 24 one shots, some of them winter/holiday themed.<br/>There'll be stories about the regular series, AUs and crossovers; tags, warnings and rating may change.<br/>Not beta-ed or Brit-picked, and as English isn't my first language, there'll be lot of mistakes and typos, sorry!<br/>01.03.2016: I corrected all the mistakes I found.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Crystalline

**Author's Note:**

> I went to this site: http://www.words-to-use.com/words/winter and then I used a random numbers generator to pick up eight prompts from each columns. I'll write a story every day, but maybe I'll not be able to post them regularly.  
> 

Martha Hudson had always had a sixth sense when it comes to relationships, since she was young; when a friend or a colleague of her introduced her a new man, somehow she always managed to figure out if their affair would last or if it would be only a brief flirtation. She was never wrong.  
Even with Frank, her own husband, it was like that: she knew too much well that their marriage wasn’t going to end well, that there would be a lot of troubles. She was right again.  
But, guys, it had been fun!  
Maybe she was very good at reading the chemistry between people, or maybe it was simple feminine intuition.  
  
  
Anyway, that’s the reason why, on the day when John Watson showed up at her apartment with a bag in his hand, she wasn’t surprised in the least.  
"Fancy a cuppa, dear?" She asked in a gentle tone: the winter was approaching and John was numb from cold.  
"Willingly, thanks."  
John put the bag near the entrance, perhaps a bit surprised that the woman hadn’t asked any questions about it, and shifted nervously his weight from foot to foot.  
"Er... Sherlock and I have already agreed, but you’re the landlady, so I must ask to you, too."  
"Ask me what, dear?"  
"I’d like to come back to live here, if that's not a problem."  
Mrs. Hudson turned away from him as she retrieved a box of cookies from the cupboard, and smiled slightly.  
"No problem at all. But if you had warned me a few days in advance, I could have settled your old bedroom."  
"Yes, about that... hm... the second room is no longer needed," he whispered quickly, his eyes fixed on his cup of tea.  
"All right. A cookie?"  
"Yes thanks. But... I want to tell you that I’ll not sleep on the couch, even," the doctor added, thinking that the old lady didn’t catch the point.  
"I hope so for you, John: your back would be affected. I always say the same thing to Sherlock, too: ‘you shouldn’t lie there all day long, or when you’ll have my age, you’ll regret it’. But drink the tea now, before it gets cold."  
They drank tea in silence, Mrs. Hudson relaxed and calm, John still on edge and slightly confused.  
"Now I let you go, dear: you’ll have many things to do."  
"Is that all?" John asked.  
"If you haven’t anything else to ask me, I would say yes."  
"But... but..."  
"Yes, dear? Is something wrong?"  
'Well, I said I come back to live here, but not in my room. This means I'll sleep with Sherlock, if this is not clear."  
"I understand it very well."  
"And...?"  
"And...?"  
"In short,” the doctor snapped “Haven’t you anything to say? All the others were shocked and queried me: when it happened, why, how could it been as I always dated women, if I'm really sure of what I'm doing, if it’s not too early after my divorce..."  
"Is that what you want from me, an interrogation?"  
"No, no... not another one, god. But I'm surprised that you aren’t surprised... if it makes any sense."  
"John, dear,” Ms. Hudson reached out a hand across the table and covered John’s one “I knew it would end like this between you e Sherlock. It took a long time for you to understand, and you have chosen a winding path to get this far, but I never had any doubt. Therefore I’ll not ask when it happened, because something happened between the two of you from the first moment you met, I’ll not ask why, I’ll not point out the fact that Sherlock is a man, because love doesn’t respond to reason o stereotypes, I’ll not say it's too early, because you have already waited too long, and I'll not ask you if you're sure, because I know that it will last forever."  
"Oh, wow... I don’t know what to say," he muttered: all his friends had done nothing but instill doubts in him, when he informed them of his decision. In comparison, the unshakable certainty of their landlady was almost balmy.  
The notes of the violin Sherlock came to her apartment, and Mrs. Hudson smiled again.  
"Someone is calling you."  
John picked up the travel bag and stood up.  
"It was really so clear to you?"  
"Crystalline. And, John?"  
"Yes?"  
"I'm over the moon for you."  
"So I am... we both are."


	2. Crackling

"Tonight we go out," Sherlock announced, showing an invitation to a charity ball to John.

"Why? You don’t care about such things."

"It’s for a case, of course: there have been a series of thefts among the frequenters of these events, so it’s likely that a thief roams there to find its victims."

John made an amused face: "Am I mistaken or not less than two weeks ago you told Lestrade that thefts are crimes too trivial to be worthy of your attention?"

"This is less trivial" Sherlock replied evasively, but John had learned to understand when his partner was lying.

"Lies,” he pressed “there's more."

"No, you're wrong."

Sherlock crossed his arms over his chest and sulked.

"Sherlock? You know I will insist until you give me an answer."

"Fine! - the detectives exploded, raising his arms to the sky - one of the victims of the thief is my aunt, and my mom is giving me hell for weeks for me to investigate about it. Moreover this ball is organized by their mutual friend."

"Aww, isn’t that sweet?" John said in a slight mocking tone.

"Don’t mock me," Sherlock muttered resentfully.

"This will be a great story for my blog."

"You don’t dare!"

"Oh, but I think I will."

Sherlock threw him one of the sofa cushions, that John avoided tilting his head to one side.

 

Sherlock hadn’t given any indication to John as to where would be held this ball, so the poor doctor went wide-eyed when their taxi stopped in front of a huge palace. Several pairs of people, all dressed smartly, showed their invitation to an usher in white gloves, nonetheless! Having hear Sherlock talking of his mother and aunt, he had expected something much more informal.

"Is ithere?"

"Problems?" Sherlock said, lacing up the buttons of his jacket.

'Yes, I would say!” the doctor snapped “If you had warned me, I would have dressed differently. Look at these people: long dresses, tuxedos, taits, ties, while I wear a pair of jeans and a sweater."

"I don’t have a tie, either."

No, he hadn’t: Sherlock wore simply blacks trousers and jacket and a dark green shirt, but this wasn’t a problem for him, who would look elegant as a fashion model even in flip flops and beach shorts.

"This is a revenge for having made fun of you this afternoon, right?" John growled through clenched teeth.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Sherlock said, but his lips lifted in a half smile.

As they climbed the steps and Sherlock showed their invitation, the usher didn’t fail to address John with a reproachful look.

God, it would be a long night.

 

The ballroom was packed.

John turned for a moment, just one single moment for watching people aroud them and asked aloud, "Well, now what do we do? Any idea on how to recognize the thief?"

But when he turned back, Sherlock had already disappeared.

"That's great," he grumbled.

God, it would be a very long night.

"Something to drink, mister?" A waiter asked him in a formal tone, but looking at him sternly.

That would have been the leitmotiv of the whole evening, right?

Rationally John knew it was a bad idea to drink on empty stomach, but he was already sufficiently annoyed to ignore the voice of reason.

"Thanks," he said, taking a glass of champagne and went into the crowd looking for Sherlock, but almost immediately a lady stood before him with her hands on her hips.

"My son has tasted oysters, but he didn’t like them and he vomited on his new trousers," she announced angrily, as if it were his fault.

John frowned: "I'm sorry, but how is this my problem?"

"Are you kidding? Take a bucket and a mop and clean. Fast."

"I'm not part of the staff."

"Then why do you dress like one of them?"

"Because of my boyfriend, the one who I’ll strangle as soon as I find him" John hissed, walked away and grabbed another glass of champagne from a tray.

God, it would be an endless night.

Dodging dancing couples and more people mistaking him for one of the staff, he reached the buffet table, holding his fourth glass of champagne... or was it the fifth? However it was the only thing holding his anger in check.

He had not found Sherlock yet, so he sent him a message, but of course his boyfriend didn’t answer.

"Oh god, Margaret, look at this," a woman next to him exclaimed. She was wearing a floral dress with colours so vivid that it seemed to have been dipped directly into LSD.

"I didn’t see a buffet table like this since the christening of my nephew Michael, and it was in 1996," the friend said; she was wearing something resembling a collection of oven mitts, which probably cost as much as his salary of a month.

"We have to take pictures."

"My Instagram will explode with comments."

The subject of the comments of the two women was the buffet table, a baroque triumph of sandwiches and snacks in jelly, with much more mayonnaise than a cardiologist would have recommend.

The woman with the floral dress eyed him and clapped her hands: "Oh, he's perfect!"

"Perfect for what?" John frowned.

"Come here and take this” she said, putting a glass of hot punch in his hand “Can I take a picture of you?"

"I think so," John answered, a bit dazed by alcohol, but the woman had already blinded him with the flash of her cell phone even before he had finished answering.

"Oh Liane, he’s great," said the woman with the dress made of oven mitts.

The ego of John recovered a bit.

'Well' thank you very much. "

"Perfect” the first woman continued “And totally consistent with the buffet, so outdated and ‘70s."

Okay, he'd had enough: aunt or not, he wouldn’t stay in that place any longer. He drained the hot punch glass in one sip and marched away looking for Sherlock.

Or, rather, he swayed.

Yes, all that liquor had been a bad idea.

The already horrible evening definitely worsened when he finally managed to find Sherlock: his partner was leaning against a wall with a terribly bored face, while a man was standing before him, talking incessantly: the guy was so close to Sherlock that their sides almost touched.

John growled quietly: the man was violating a no fly zone, a sacred personal space where only he was admitted, and it was urgent to put the record straight immediately.

When Sherlock saw him, signaled something with his eyes and, if John had been more sober, would understand that it was one of their coded signals to report a suspect, but at that time the former soldier was too angry and too jealous to think about it.

When the stranger reached out to smooth a nonexistent crease on Sherlock jacket, that was the straw that broke the camel: John approached him and tapped a finger on his shoulder.

"Excuse me, what do you think you-"

The man looked at him briefly and then handed him his empty glass.

"More champagne for me and my guest."

This was really too much.

"I'm not a member of staff," he thundered.

When a waiter walked by, John took possession of his tray, dropped to the ground all the glasses and slammed it on the stranger’s head, under the gaze of an amazed Sherlock.

"We're leaving," John announced, dragging Sherlock away by the arm, but the other man wasn’t willing to let it go and he jumped on the former soldier: the two rolled on the ground and the other guests, frightened by the brawl, fled in all directions; in haste, some of them bumped into the buffet table, which toppled down and on to other guests: laundries would have their work cut out, the next day.

In all this, Sherlock was still in the middle of the chaos of broken plates and cups and trampled sandwiches, struck by an intuition, and then he exclaimed: "Oh ... of course! it’s not him, John, it’s the wife” he pointed a finger at a lady dressed in yellow “She’s the serial thief!"

The detective helped John to get rid of his opponent, while the woman ran away at a remarkable speed considering the high heels she was wearing, but her escape was short-lived, because just outside the palace, she tripped and fell in front of two police cars that someone had called when the fight broke out.

Lestrade got out from a car, looked the woman to the ground and then to Sherlock and John, who had stop in the doorway, and shook his head with a sigh: "I should imagine that you were involved."

 

An hour later, John had finished his statement: in the end Sherlock was right and the case was quite simple: the wife of the man with whom he had had a fight, took advantage of the acquaintances of her husband to attend parties and study the victims for robbering them, while her man was in the dark (maybe too busy to stretch his hands where he shouldn’t).  
He said goodbye to Greg and walked to Sherlock, who in all that time had been on the phone with his mother. From the tone of voice, she didn’t seem very happy with the turn that events had taken.  
"The thief was arrested and aunt Sabrine will regain her jewelry, case closed, goodnight" Sherlock snapped, closing the communications.  
"Uh... I'm sorry" John muttered scratching his head: now that he was sober he realized that he had to trigger the pandemonium in the ballroom and he would have to be the one to suffer the wrath of Mummy Holmes.  
"Nonsense! I was going to die of boredom because of vain talk of that man, but your intervention made the evening far more crackling, and then - Sherlock lowered his voice by an octave and put his lips next to John’s ear - Have I ever said that you’re terribly sexy when defending my honor?"  
John put his arms aroud his waist.  
"Why don’t we home, so I can show you in what other ways I’m crackling?"  
"Taxi!"


	3. Fireside

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Victorian/ACD Holmes

I took off my watch from the pocket, checked it for the umpteenth time and sighed: it was nine o'clock in the evening, the street lights cut weakly through the darkness, and I was waiting on the sidewalk for over twenty minutes and hadn’t seen a coach, yet .  
It was snowing from the early afternoon, but I had to leave my office because I was called by one of my patients who had a high fever for three days. I reached his house, not without a few difficulties, where I found out quickly that the patient had a common cold and was just exaggerating his symptoms; I administered a medicine, but, at his insistence, I had to wait for the fever to come down before I could leave, and in the meantime I had to listen to his complaints about how delicate his health was, though, since he was my patient, I know he hadn’t had nothing more serious than a flu. I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying that serious illnesses were very different.  
The streets were a quagmire due to snow and the few people who were walking, were leaning on walls and lampposts to avoid to slip. I wrapped my coat around myself and blew warm breath on the hands cupped over my face to keep it warm: I was tired, cold and extremely irritated at being called out unnecessarily.  
Finally a coach came and I could tell the driver to go to Baker Street: I couldn’t wait to get home and relax.  
The journey was slower than usual due to the bad weather, but I finally arrived at 221B: our landlady didn’t come out and no light came from her apartment, so probably she was asleep already.  
I went in the apartment that I shared with Holmes, expecting to find the same situation: my best friend wasn’t following any investigation and was in an almost lethargic state for a couple of days. The smell of pipe hit me as soon as I crossed the threshold, but the living room wasn’t deserted: a figure was curled up in an armchair near the fireside.  
Watching Holmes sleep was a rare sight and it amazed me to see how such a tall man could lie in a so narrow space: he looked like a cat sleeping in his basket.  
I took off my shoes and walked quietly to him: his stern face, his grey and penetrating eyes, and his sharp words often induced fear and discomfort in those who didn’t know him. But, at that moment, softly lit by the flames of the fireplace, he was peaceful and the features of his angular face were relaxed so much, that he looked younger.  
There weren’t many occasions that I had to study Holmes’ face without being studied in my turn, so I sat down on the floor slowly and continued to look at him, fascinated.  
I felt weird: it was as if I was doing something forbidden, but not unbecoming. 'Intimate' was perhaps the word that best described that moment; I couldn’t deny myself to feel a deep affection for him, and maybe even something more, which unfortunately, for obvious reasons, I couldn’t give a name. And I knew that Holmes, behind his mask of rationality and coldness, felt the same for me, and more than once I had a glimpse of that.  
I smiled to myself: if Holmes could read my thoughts, he would have scolded with his stern voice: "How much sentimentality, my dear Watson. You’re really a novelist in the heart."  
As if hearing my thoughts, Holmes stretched and opened his eyes.  
Rather than to get up clumsily and pretend to be doing something, I sat where I was. I didn’t even pretend to stay there to warm myself near the fireside, because Holmes would have noticed.  
"Ah, my dear Watson - he said in a voice roughened by sleep - I'm sorry that you had to face this harsh climate because of a hypochondriac."  
I wasn’t surprised anymore when Holmes deduced what I had done without me saying a single word, but I was still charmed by his powers of deduction as the first day.  
"How did you know?" I asked, knowing full well that he couldn’t wait to explain it to me.  
"The legs of your trousers are still damp, and you’re massaging the muscles of your right thigh, a sign that you stood still for some time. When you stand, you unconsciously tend to favor that leg and to lean less on the left, because of your old wound."  
"I don’t even realize I’m doing it!"  
"But why were you standing? Your medical office isn’t far from here and you could come back home without waiting for a coach. So you had to go out to a house far away and then wait for a coach."  
"That’s right, but how can you claim that I visited a hypochondriac?"  
"To get you to leave your office with this weather, the patient must have said he suffers from serious disease, but the fact that you’re back home means that it wasn’t so serious, otherwise you would have stay there to take care of the patient."  
"Amazing as always, my friend."  
Holmes couldn’t get enough of my compliments and I never got tired to pay them to him, communicating with the words of praise all I couldn’t tell him.  
"Are you hungry?" Holmes asked, still in that curled position on the chair.  
"Starving."  
"Our dear Mrs. Hudson has waited up until an hour ago, then she was too sleepy. He asked me to wake her up when you was back, but I don’t think we should take advantage of the kindness of our landlady: I believe that two grown men are able to heat up soup on the stove."  
"Didn’t you have dinner, Holmes?" I asked, surprised.  
"My dear Watson, you know I’m not fond of food and, in particular, it’s not pleasant for me to dine alone."  
The heat of the apartment was invigorating after all the cold I had suffered, but knowing that Holmes had waited for me to dine, warmed my heart like no fireplace could ever do.  
"I survived a military campaign, I think I can manage warming a soup," I joked.  
Holmes hid a yawn behind his hand and smiled apologetically.  
"I kept on sleeping although you came back home."  
A thought struck me at that moment: with or without an ongoing investigation, Holmes sure was a very light sleeper due to his the wary nature, and the slightest noise could wake him. For example, if we slept at an inn outside London for a case, he would awaken every time someone passed by in the corridor outside our room. Even there at Baker Street sometimes he complained that Mrs. Hudson had woken him early moving some furniture in the apartment below.  
And yet he hadn’t woken up when I got home that evening, so relaxed in my presence that he continued to sleep peacefully.  
The thing was entirely mutual: when a client came to Baker Street in the early morning, Holmes went up to my bedroom. Surely his footsteps made noise along the old wooden steps, but I wouldn’t wake me until my friend touched my shoulder. For an ex-soldier like me, always used to sleep with one eye open, it was strange.  
Unconsciously, even in sleep, we perceived the mutual presence and continued to sleep deeply because we trusted each other.  
The thought was almost touching.  
I looked into his eyes, which were almost sweet: we were thinking the same thing.  
But I couldn’t say it out loud, of course.  
"You’re probably really tired," I offered.  
I expected that Holmes’d say that I was a poor observer, because there were no reasons for hime to be tired, as he had no cases, however my friend settled back his head on the arm of his chair and smiled.  
"My dear Watson, always so diplomatic."  
"One of us has to be," I said with more bitterness than the circumstances required.  
"I know” he replied in a whisper “I know, my dear friend."  
In a moment we would get up to warm up the dinner, but in the meantime we stood still huddled by the fireside, silent witness of all our unspoken words.


	4. Cozy

_“I’m not lonely”_  
_“How would you know?”_  
  
It wasn’t easy for him to admit, but his brother was right.  
You couldn’t feel the lack of something that you didn’t know that existed, so Mycroft Holmes didn’t feel loneliness because he had never desired the company of someone.  
So far.  
Similarly, he had never considered his own home cold or austere, at least until he set foot for the first time in Greg’s flat.  
Greg had been to his house several times, sometimes because an investigation ended in the middle of the night and the policeman collapsed on the nearest orizontal surface, sometimes because Mycroft could be very convincing (and Greg was gladly convinced to stay).  
However it had never happened the other way, because Lesteade’s flat wasn’t along Mycroft’s route from home to office or Diogenes, and he was a creature of habits in regard to schedules and shifts.  
One day, however, an unforeseen event forced Mycroft to find alternative accommodation for some time. During the excavations for the renovation of a building next to his house, an unexploded bomb of World War II had been found, and the whole neighborhood had to be evacuated suddenly to allow the Army to defuse the bomb in safety.  
Mycroft was reached by the news while he was having lunch with Gregory, and immediately began to look for a hotel for that night on his smartphone.  
"You can come to my place," the inspector proposed.  
"But today is Thursday, and-"  
"Well, this week my ex-wife took the children on vacation, they aren’t here, so I’m not forcing you to do babysitting," he jokes.  
Mycroft had met only once one of Greg’s children, an eight-year child able to ask sixtythree questions in a minute on topics totally alien to him.  
Every now and then he still wondered what the hell a Pokemon was.  
"In this case, thank you."  
  
"Sorry, there's a bit of a mess, but I wasn’t expecting guests."  
The first thing that struck Mycroft, however, were the smells: the smoke that impregnated curtains and armchairs, coffee from that morning and orange peels forget in a saucer on the kitchen table, the fabric softener of clothes hung out drying in the bathroom, a stack of old newspapers close to the entrance door, from which Greg had cut out crime news, and also a slight musty smell.  
His house, by comparison, was sterile: the cleaning lady washed the floor every morning and then aried out every room, erasing all traces of smells.  
Mycroft took a few steps into the main room and ended up stepping on a rubber dinosaur that let out a squeak.  
"Ah,” Greg picked it up and threw it in a basket full of other colorful junk “I told you it was a mess."  
There was an ironed shirt abandoned on the back of a chair, the sink was full of dishes waiting to be washed, an unmatched sock was sticking out from under the sofa, a paperback novel was lying face down on the coffee table, covered with a thin layer of dust, a sign that it wasn’t very exciting. There were crumbs of crackers on the threadbare carpet, an old stain of chocolate on the arm of the couch, down the hall you could see the unmade bed in the bedroom and a pair of shoes abandoned on the floor.  
The set, combined with the strong smells, would have to be unpleasant, but instead it conveyed a warm, comfortable feeling: it was a home, lived, inhabited, cozy, and not just a house.  
In his estate everything was perfect and tidy: three-piece suits hanging in the closet, shoes lined up in shoe rack, books on the shelves divided by author and in ascending order of height, old-fashioned ornaments lined up on the mantel, not a curl dust on the floor or on the furnitures, but, compared to Greg’ small flat, it was barren and empty as a mausoleum. Elegant, but without soul.  
And he hadn’t realized it until now.  
"Maybe you preferred a hotel?" Greg asked, seeing him still standing in the middle of the room.  
"No, no, it's perfect."  
Mycroft took off his jacket and shoes and sat on the couch, feeling finally at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to say something, even just "your English really sucks!" :D


	5. Chilling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AU Bondlock - Kidlock  
> Sherlock and Jim are 13 years old, Q(uinton) is 10, James, John and Sebastian are 16.  
> Q is the third brother Holmes.

The fatal accident happened to Carl Powers in the old mine caused a great uproar. The authorities surrounded the whole area with a metallic fence, put a no-entry sign on the entrance gate and with this considered completed their task.  
The children of the nearby town, however, continued to be fascinated by the place and soon many legends spread around: the tunnels of the mine were bewitched and whoever came in wouldn’t go out again, the ghost of Carl Powers wandered along with a miner died a hundred years before for the outbreak of an explosive charge, on the bottom of the mine there was an alien spaceship and the aliens had kill Carl because he had discovered their secret.  
The stories were numerous and all very imaginative, and rather than to diminish with time, they increased.

  
One morning Sherlock was sitting in the courtyard of the school, reading the biography of his favorite violinist, when he heard Molly Hooper talk to a friend of her.  
"It seems that Friday nights someone has seen the spirit of Carl near the gate of the mine."  
"Oh, what a nonsense!" Sherlock said, raising his head from the book.  
"Don’t you believe in ghosts, Sherlock?" Molly asked, curling a lock of hair around her finger.  
"No, of course not: their existence has never been proven scientifically."  
"It’s true, they have seen them!" said Molly’s friend.  
"Oh, really? Then, where is the evidence? The photos?"  
"There’re none," the girl muttered, frowning.  
"See? Only fools believe in ghosts" Sherlock concluded: sometimes he wanted to get into the old mine just to prove that ghosts didn’t exist. The discussion would be continued but then Sherlock saw his brother Quinton behind Molly: the child looked sad and crushed, so Sherlock called him.  
"Q, what happens?"  
"Why do you call your brother like that?" Molly asked.  
"Because he hates his name."  
Q shook his head and said nothing, but Sherlock knew something was wrong.  
"Have you already eaten? Where's your lunch box?"  
"I forgot it at home."  
"Don’t tell lies, this morning you had it with you... it was Jim, isn’t it?"  
Jim Moriarty was the torment of many children of the school, besides he had become friend with a boy from high school, Sebastian Moran, who was big and massive, and together they took delight in tormenting the younger ones. Jim had repeatedly asked to Sherlock to join his group of friends, but he had always refused, considering them stupid and childish. He also hated Jim's bullying attitude, which was strengthened by the fact that his family was the most important and wealthy in the town.  
"We're going to ask it back."  
"Sherlock, forget it!" Q said, but the other didn’t listen and marched to the bench where Jim was sitting.  
"Holmes, what can I do for you?" He asked with an unpleasant smirk.  
"Give the lunchbox back to my brother."  
"What evidence do you have that I've taken it? Hey Sebastian, do you see evidences around here?" Jim asked laughing, turning to the boy who was leaning against the wall besides him with his arms folded.  
"No."  
"You are childish. You should be in a kindergarten, not in a school" Sherlock scoffed.  
"What did you say, microbe?" Sebastian broke away from the wall and walked menacingly toward Sherlock, cracking his knuckles. Sherlock stood in place, looking at him with contempt.  
A little far away, Q and Molly watched the scene paralyzed by fear.  
"What's going on here?"  
They were approached by two boys of the same age of Moran wearing rugby uniforms: they were John Watson and James Bond, captain and vice captain of the team, as well as friends of Sherlock and Q.  
"They took Q’s lunchbox," Sherlock said.  
"Ohhh, here comes the cavalry!” Jim sang and got up from the bench, going in front of Sherlock “Good for you."  
"What do you mean?"  
"That you’re so brave when other people is around” Jim hissed in his ear “But alone you’re worth nothing."  
Sherlock's cheeks became red with indignation: "I-"  
"Leave him alone, Sherlock, it’s not worth it," John said, dragging him away from Moriarty.  
"Good, run and hide behind mommy. Mommy, where did you leave your skirt?"  
John pointed a finger at him: "Stop here, Jim, I say this for your own good."  
"Or what?” Moran said.  
James stood before him: "You don’t really want to find out, Sebastian."  
As they were outnumbered, Jim motioned for Sebastian to retire, but before he had a chance to turn around James, he grabbed him by the arm.  
"And before the end of the lessons I want you to give the lunchbox back to Q."  
"Those two are definitely passing the sign" John sighed, watching them going away.  
"You should have let me to face them" Sherlock muttered angry, crossing his arms over his chest.  
"Are you crazy? Moran is twice your size."  
"He’s big and stupid, I can beat him when I want."  
John laid his hands on Sherlock’s shoulders: "Sherlock, you must not listen to Jim’s provocations, you’re only plaqying his game."  
"But-"  
"Promise me that yo’ll leave him alone." Actually, John was quite concerned about the influence Jim exerted on his friend, and feared he might commit some foolishness.  
"I promise," Sherlock muttered, but without conviction.  
At the end of the day Q found his lunchbox with dinosaurs inside his locker and, before going home, he passed near the rugby field to show it to James.

The day after, Sherlock and Q passed most of the afternoon in the library, then they walked on foot to their home, which was a bit out of the town. Along the way they passed beside the old mine, whose openings, now closed by railings, seemed like dark and threatening eyes.  
The younger boy took the hand of his big brother and held it tightly.  
"Can we walk faster, Sherlock?"  
"Don’t tell me you're afraid of the mine, Q!"  
"It’s chilling."  
"It’s just abandoned tunnels carved into the rock, there’s nothing to fear."  
"If so - said a teasing voice behind him - why don’t you go in, Holmes?"  
Sherlock turned and sighed heavily: there were Jim and his inseparable buddy. Probably they wanted revenge for being sent away by John and James.  
"Q, go away" Sherlock said, putting himself in front of his brother.  
"But…"  
"Don’t argue, go."  
Q ran away, Sebastian moved to follow him, but Jim cut him off.  
"No, forget the kid. Let’s see how brave is our friend Sherlock without the support of his friends."  
"What do you want, Moriarty? A fight?"  
The other guy threw his head back and laughed.  
"No, no, nothing so barbarous: I want to see if you have the courage to enter the mine to defy the ghosts."  
"I thought you were more intelligent than this, Jim: ghosts don’t exist."  
"So I'm giving you the opportunity to prove it."  
"All right, I'll go, and you must take back what you said."  
"All right - Jim granted with a malicious smile - You bring me something from inside the mine and I’ll not call you a coward anymore."  
Sherlock had a small flashlight attached to a key ring: he checked it, picked up a piece of chalk from the ground and without hesitation stepped over the wire mesh closing the site, came up to one of the entrances and slipped between the bars, designed to ward off adults, but that could nothing against a kid angry and determined to show his worth.  
The small flashlight illuminated the uneven walls, carved with pickaxes and explosives, casting long shadows before him.  
Sherlock swallowed hard, but repeated again tohimself that ghosts and monsters didn’t exist and took a few steps inside the tunnel, then he turned to the right and drew an arrow on the wall with chalk: he would follow the signs to get out of there.  
Outside the gate, Jim chuckled: "Sherlock wants to do as Tom Thumb and leave a trail of bread crumbs, but it would be too easy: wait a minute, then enter the mine and remove the signs that he made."  
"It was easy to convince him to go in."  
"They are all the same in the end, I have just to press the right buttons and they do what I want: for Carl was enough to tell that there was gold in the mine, for Sherlock I have relied on his pride."

Little Q had disobeyed his brother: he had run away, but then he turned back and hid behind some bushes, and he heard everything. With or without ghosts, that place was dangerous: the miners had dug many tunnels, but after more than a century many of them were unsafe and could collapse at any moment.  
Sherlock was in grave danger and he had to do something: he crept silently away and ran in the direction of the town; James’ house wasn’t far away and surely he and John were there to study: John could never do that at his house because his sister bothered him.  
As he came in sight of the house, he clung to the bell and soon James leaned out the window upstairs.  
"Q, what happens?"  
"Where is Sherlock?" John asked, surprised by the fact that the child was alone.  
"You have to help me, Sherlock is in the mine."  
"What the hell he’s doing there?"  
Q explained everything to the older boys, who eventually looked at each other, worried.  
"What do we do John, call the firefighters?"  
"We should, but it will take hours to organize a team. Admitting that they believe the words of a ten year old boy."  
"Okay” James was unimpressed “Then we go."  
"If Moran has erased the marks made by Sherlock on the walls of the tunnels, we risk losing ourselves, too. Shit, I’ll kill Moran the next time I meet him."  
"We can use these” James, who liked espionage, took three walkie talkie from a desk drawer “And I know for a fact that in the office next to mine there’re maps of all the galleries."  
"Okay, let's do it."  
"I'm coming!" Q exclaimed.  
"But you stay out” James warned “To alert the rescue in case something goes wrong."

Sherlock walked for nearly half an hour in the dark tunnels: as they descended into the belly of the earth, the air grew colder, so much that little puffs of steam were formed at every breath he took.  
The sound of his footsteps created a strong echo, the drip of water falling from the ceiling and the sighs of the wind created an eerie atmosphere.  
"It’'s just the wind," he said to give himself courage, but now he was in complete agreement with Q, who called that place ‘chilling’. When a flying wind produced a sound louder than the others, Sherlock dropped his flashlight on the ground in fear; it died out, and the gallery was plunged into darkness. The boy tripped and fell, and for a moment he panicked.  
Luckily he calmed down quickly and probed the rock around him in search of the torch: the ground was uneven and lumpy, it couldn’t be rolled far away. Finally he took the small metal object in his left hand and lit it: it still worked.  
He remembered John’s words and realized that his best friend was right: it wasn’t worth risking his life because of Jim Moriarty. To hell with what he thought of him, he would come back immediately.  
He lit up the wall, illuminating a first arrow, then another farther away and then... nothing.  
The signs that he had left on the walls were gone.  
"It can’t be..." he murmured in a low voice: he was sure he had left the marks at a regular distance, so where were they?  
"Jim!" He growled angrily. Now he was really in trouble: no one knew where he was and could help him. He was completely alore.  
He lit a gallery and then another, and moved to the right, hoping that it was the right way to go out.

When the three friends arrived at the mine, Jim and Sebastian had already left to not be involved in some trouble.  
James unhinged the door of the offices and the three immediately began to look for maps.  
"Here they are," John said, picking up some sheets of paper rolled up. He unrolled them on the floor and looked at them, but soon he shook his head.  
"I don’t understand anything!"  
"I do” Q said fixing the glasses on his nose “This is the entrance, here is the north and this sheet is upside down."  
"Are you sure?"  
"Trust me, he is" James interjected: he had seen Q in action in an orienteering race and knew the little boy was an ace at reading maps. He handed one of the walkie talkie to him.  
"You'll drive us, we will split up trying to find Sherlock."

Sherlock was now certain that he had gone in the the wrong direction, otherwise he would have already emerged in daylight. Instead he walked on some old rails that he had never seen before.  
"Oh, damn" he sighed, slumping to the ground: he was disheartened, frightened and terribly cold. However, the rails for minecarts had to bring outdoors, he should only decide the right direction.  
He walked to the left.

"Any news, James?"  
"No trace of him. And you?"  
"Nothing."  
"These tunnels are not infinite, John, we'll find him."  
"John” Q said throught his walkie talkie “In 100 meters there is a junction, go left, because the right one is a dead end. James, instead you go straight for half a kilometer."  
"Roger that."  
Q’s instructions were very precise and allow the two boys to not get lost.

As he walked, Sherlock heard a strange sound, like a crack, and raised his flashlight toward the ceiling, from which a fine powder fell down.  
"Oh no. No, no, no."  
He covered his head with his arms and run away, a moment before being hit by a volley of stones, but unfortunately he remained stuck in a dead end.

"Did you hear that noise, James?"  
"Quite far."  
"But I have hear it close, it looked like a landslide."  
"Be careful, John” Q said “According to the map you are in an area where the rock is very fragile."  
"I noticed."

Sherlock coughed and covered his face to protect himself from dust, then, when it was settled, he turned his flashlight around to illuminate the area: it was practically buried alive, so then he did the only thing that a thirteen year old boy would have done in the same situation: he cried for help at the top of his lungs. He knew it was useless, because he was alone, but he was too scared to think about it, and shouting seemed the only sensible thing to do.  
After a few minutes he stopped to catch his breath and he thought he heard someone calling his name.  
"John...?"  
Yes, it was John!  
"JOHN! I'M HERE!"  
"Keep shouting Sherlock, so I find you!"  
The older boy announced to his friends he had fing him and Q gave directions to James to reach John.  
Together they removed the higher rocks to get a hole big enough for Sherlock to pass throught.  
"Are you all right? Nothing broken?" John asked in a concerned voice.  
"I'm fine, and... uh... John?"  
"Yup?"  
"I'm sorry, I should have listened to you."  
John should have been very angry with him for his recklessness, but he was too happy that Sherlock was safe and sound.  
"Save the fuss for later, now get out of here," James said: he couldn’t wait to leave the dangerous tunnels.  
As soon as they resurfaced in the open air, Q run toward them and jumped to Sherlock, who hugged him, while James ruffled his hair.  
"You've been very good, Q. Without your help we would have get lost too."  
John looked around angrly: it was a shame that Moriarty and Moran hadn’t come back to contemplate the results of their actions, because he had a great desire to smash their face.  
"Those two will not get away with this" he grumbled.  
Q, still hugged by Sherlock, turned his head to look at John.  
"I heard them talking about the boy who died last year."  
"Carl Powers?"  
"Yes, him."  
"And what did they say?"  
"That they had convinced him to enter the mine, saying that there was a treasure."  
"It 's terrible!” John blurted out “We need to report it to the police."  
Sherlock shrugged: "And with what evidence? It’s their word against ours, and you know how powerful Jim’s family is."  
That boy was always very careful in what he did, and both with Carl and him, was careful to not compromise himself.  
"So? We just let it go?"  
"Sherlock is right, unfortunately” James said “At the moment we have nothing in hand, and our charges would fall on deaf ears."  
Sherlock pursed his lips and looked at John with determination: "Jim is smart, but also arrogant. Sooner or later he will make a mistake and when that happens, we will show to everyone who he really is."  
"But this time we’ll do it together."  
"Yup."  
"Together!" Q shouted and held out his hand. One by one, the other three put their hand on top of his, and made an oath, as that little adventure had bound them for life.


	6. Dismal

"And here's the autopsy room," the nurse said to the new hire, a guy at his first job.

"Oh my God... Must I come here often?"

"Unfortunately, yes, Kevin: you need to bring samples to the laboratories and report here the results of the analysis. Why, are you afraid?"

"No, but... why this hall is so dark?"

The nurse chuckled: "I don’t think that the dead are interested in the lighting."

"But the living are" he grumbled.

"So you're afraid."

"In horror movies nothing good happens in places like this.

The two met a girl with her hair tightened in a ponytail walking down the hall.

"Hello Cathy, how are you?"

"Fine. How about you, Molly?"

"As usual. Who’s your friend?"

"Kevin: from today he’ll work with us."

"Oh, then I'll see you often." Molly greeted the two and walked away.

"Is she a colleague of yours?" Kevin asked.

"Not really: she’s the coroner."

"Are you kidding me?"

"No. Why? Don’t you think that a woman is able to do this job?"

"I don’t understand why any person wants to do this job."

 

Kevin found himself in that wing of the hospital more frequently than he wanted (okay, he was afraid. Glad now?); one day he saw Molly having tea in the room reserved for doctors and approached her waving his hand in greeting.

"Oh, hello Kevin. Do you want something to eat?" She asked with her gentle smile.

"Uh... no, thanks."

The very idea of all those corpses lined up in their cold cells gave him the creeps, but Molly seemed completely at ease.

"May I ask you one thing?"

"Sure."

"Working here doesn’t make you anxious?"

"No, why?"

"Because this place is dismal," the boy snapped.

"Is it?" Molly asked tilting her head to one side.

"I say! It's dark and it's full of dead people. "

"It’s a matter of perspective."

Actually, Kevin wasn’t the first one to ask her that question, and at least he had spared the classic "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

People were amazed that a person who loves kittens and cute things like her was doing a job so macabre.

But Molly loved the quiet stillness of the morgue, she could not imagine quieter place to work: the dead didn’t complain when she listened to the latest album of Madonna, or when she spoke aloud about her cats. They didn’t judge her, and she didn’t judge them.

Whatever they did in life, they were all equal in front of her, lying on the metal table. Many of them had a violent dead, some had been cruelly mutilated, so from her point of view weren’t the dead to be dismal or macabre.

Contrariwise, the living often were like that.

And it wasn’t just that: the work she did allowed her to give answers to those who needed them. If someone died suddenly, with the autopsy she could tell the relatives that it wasn’t their fault, that they couldn’t notice that aneurysm or the heart defect; other times, a death was considered to be natural too quickly, and she could find out if it was really like that, and give justice to the dead.

So no, she had never considered ‘dismal’ her work.

 

Molly said goodbye to Kevin and returned to the autopsy room. Lying on the table there was a man of sixty years, dead, according to medical records, of natural causes.

"All right, dear - she smiled - let's see if it's true."


	7. Blustery

When winter came and the weather was cold and blustery, the villagers were trembling with fear and locked up thir kids in the houses for days, until the dry wind of the north coming from the two twin mountains would not stop blowing.

When the wind began to blow, coming down fast along the mountains sides, the men did everything to protect themselves and their families: they put on terrifying masks, played horns and drums to ward off spirits, sprinkled salt on the doorstep and hung all sorts of talisman, but despite all these precautions, sometimes some children disappeared into thin air, kidnapped, according to legend, by the people of the wind.

The villagers had never seen these creatures, but as they were so cruel to abduct children, they could only be monstrous, and were described like that in their stories, and they all were afraid.

The first year when John heard the legend of the people of the wind from his grandmother, he was five years old, and was already confined to the house for the after-effects of pneumonia. He spent all day in his room, in bed, sulking because window he saw his sister and the other children playing outside in the snow, but one morning he therewas no one.

"Waether has become blustery” his grandmother explained  “The people of the wind is coming."

That night, John awoke with a start, because he thought he heard a noise. He got up and went to the window, illuminated by moonlight, and gaped in amazement: outside, there was a child of the same age of him, with thick curly hair.

And he was floating in midair.

After recovering from the shock, John opened the window: yes, the other child was suspended in the air for real.

"Wow..."

"I’m Sherlock" the boy said.

"My name is-"

"John Watson."

"How do you know?"

"I just know."

"Okay. Are you one of the people of the wind?"

"Yes," Sherlock said with a grin, expecting another child bursting into tears hearing that, instead John's eyes widened.

"You're different from how they describe you. Uhm, do you wanna come in? It's cold out there. "

"No” Sherlock said, a bit surprised by the invitation “But you must come with me." Sherlock stretched out his hand, but John hesitated.

"I can’t fly the way you do: I would fall down."

"It will not happen, trust me."

"I can’t trust a stranger... but I could trust a friend."

"It would be different?"

"Oh yes, a friend would never hurt me. Are you my friend, Sherlock?" John asked, sticking his hand to him and lifting the little finger.

The child who was floating in midair looked confused for a moment, then he imitated John weaving the little finger with his.

"Yup."

John's mouth broke into a big toothless smile.

"Can I really fly like you?"

Sherlock squeezed his hand and hoisted him over the window frame.

"Trust me," he repeated.

"All right."

John put his foot in a vacuum and, miraculously, didn’t fall.

"Listen, John, now we should..."

"Oh damn!” John interrupted, over-excited “Look, I'm floating! That’s cool! Hey, look, we can go as high as those trees?" He pointed to a group of tall fir trees, not far from the house, and Sherlock nodded.

"Come on, let's do it."

Always holding hands, the two children hovered in the air, laughing, brushed the treetops, glided over the roofs of the houses, went higher and higher, untill people below them became small as ants, they following the course of the river, feeling like the kings of the whole world, then came back.

It was the most amazing experience of little John’s life.

"Thank you!” John cried hugging him tight “I had never had so much fun."

People were wrong about the people of the wind, they weren’t horrible monsters at all.

"Me neither," said Sherlock, but after a while his bright smile faded slowly.

"Is something wrong, Sherlock?"

The boy thought for a long moment, then shook his head.

"I'm late, I have to go."

"Will you come back to see me?"

"I don’t know."

"But you're my friend, I want to see you again."

"Tomorrow you’ll not want it anymore."

"Don’t say that!"

"I would never see you again, because we are friends. Goodbye, John."

"Wait, Sherlock! I don’t understand," he shouted, but Sherlock had already moved away on the wind.

That night Mildred Parker, a child who was very ill for several months, vanished into thin air from his bed and her parents were desperate.

Apparently, that part of the legend was true. He wanted to ask Sherlock why his people did something so bad, but the little boy with black curls never returned.

John recovered from pneumonia and went on with his life, but every time a gust of wind caressed his face, the child whispered, "Why, Sherlock?" hoping that the wind would bring his words to him.

 

The second time he met Sherlock he was sixteen. The wind blew hard in the morning, but he and his friend Bill Murray had in mind to break the curfew, cross the frozen river and get to the next village, where Mary Morstan and Sarah Bateson were waiting for them.

But just when he got dressed to go out, he heard someone knocking on the glass of his window.

Out, suspended in mid-air, there was a boy of about the same age of him, tall, skinny, with curly black hair.

It was Sherlock.

"Oh... he-hello" he stammered, surprised.

"Hello John."

Sherlock had the same sad smile of the last time they had met.

"It's been years! Where have you been?" the blond boy asked.

"Everywhere the wind brought me."

"You know, I was almost convinced that I had dreamed the whole thing, but the memory of that flight was too real."

"It was all true."

"And we could do it again?"

"Give me your hand."

The moment he stepped over the sill, John forgot about Bill, Mary and the rest of the world. With fingers intertwined with Sherlock’s, he hovered in the cool of the night as an eagle swooping down to graze meadows and slopes and going up fast heading for the stars. The boy relived the same joy, the same euphoria of his childhood, but now he had a different awareness, and when Sherlock took him home, looked at him seriously.

"Your people are here to take some of us, isn’t it?"

"If you know, why do you ask?"

"If you're my friend, you should be the one to tell me."

"Yes, someone will be taken."

"Can you do anything to stop them?"

"I can’t and I will not."

"But what you do is wrong!"

"I'm sorry you feel that way."

"And how else could I feel?"

"Goodbye, John."

The next morning he learned of the disappearance of Bill: on the frozen river there was just his cap, but there was no trace of him.

"Why?" He asked to the wind blew hard every time.

 

The third and last time he met Sherlock, he was a thousand miles from his native village in the mountains, a young soldier involved in a grueling war in a desert with an unpronounceable name. He was seriously wounded in the shoulder and left there in the sun, while his companions sought to escape.

Suddenly a cold and strong wind came, forming a sandstorm. It was a wind that smelled of moss and mushrooms, snow and clean air.

It was the wind coming down sometimes from the twin mountains in winter to his village and, a moment later, Sherlock materialized before his eyes.

He was a grown man, but his unruly curls remained unchanged. Now that John was an adult, however, he didn’t believe that a creature like Sherlock grow up like a normal human being, probably he took the most congenial form to his interlocutor.

"This time we really have to go, I’m no longer allowed to make exceptions" Sherlock said with his usual sad face.

"So I will disappear as all the others who are kidnapped?" He muttered, tired and resigned.

"Yes, your body will dissolve in the wind, and your spirit will remain in our garden, beyond the twin mountains."

"I have not figured out why your people do these terrible things."

"Because this is our task: when an innocent child is about to die in a atrocious way, we come and take him in a more gentle way. Nobody suffers, I swear."

"It’s cruel."

"The death that they expect would be even worse."

"Mildred Parker?"

"She had a disease that menkind don’t know yet, it’s called leukemia."

"Bill Murray?"

"It would be drowned in the river: the ice was too thin."

"And what would happen to me if I stay here?"

"After the sandstorm, you’ll captured and tortured to death by your enemies."

"Not a pretty prospect. Tell me Sherlock, you should have taken me the first time we met, isn’t it? "

"Yes."

"And why you didn’t?"

"In many centuries, you have been the first one to say that we were friends and I wanted you to live your life as long as possible."

John closed his eyes and pondered: it wasn’t so bad after all, he had grown, had many friends, every now and then he fell in love, and had seen the world.

"I cheated death twice for you, John” Sherlock continued  “But now I can’t do it."

"A garden, you said?"

"Yes."

"Is it beautiful?"

"It is."

"Will you come to keep company to my spirit there?"

"Every time you want."

The people of the wind weren’t as cruel as people had thought; they gave a gentle and painless death to those who do not deserve to suffer.

"I'm sorry for never understaning."

"It doesn’t matter. Now you know. "

“Fine, take me with you."

Sherlock held out his hand and John held on tightly.

The wind picked up again and when the sand settled, the body of John was gone.


	8. Cloudy

The math teacher was speaking uninterrupted for half an hour and John had had enough. He looked forward to the window, wondering if he could jump down into the yard without the teacher noticing, then sighed, tried to focus on the textbook, but gave up quickly and began to look around, to find his best friend Sherlock looking at him reproachfully. He knew Sherlock from the first year and they had immediately became friends. When John spoke with other people, everyone gaped, because Sherlock was reputed to be an unapproachable weirdo.  
Yes, Sherlock certainly was eccentric, but he was also incredibly smart, and John was never tired of his company.  
"If you continue to get sidetracked like that” Sherlock said at the end of the lesson “you'll have big problems at the final test."  
"Thank goodness you're here to give me reps."  
Sherlock was very good in science subjects.  
"If you were mindful during class, it would take half the time to you to learn things."  
John closed the books in the locker and snorted.  
"You sound like my mother. Come on, let's go home."  
The two of them walked toward the bus stop, but then John proposed to make a detour to the park, they two sat on the grass back to back, and John immediately pointed the finger at a man who was standing in front of the entrance.  
"Come on, tell me: what do he do for living?"  
For some time his best friend had made a habit of studying the strangers and saying what their job was.  
At first John believed that he pulled a guess, but Sherlock was right in most cases: it couldn’t be just luck.  
Sherlock called it 'science of deduction', anyway, whatever it was, it was cool to listen to his explanations.  
Sherlock put his hands together under his chin and, after studying the man indicated by John for a few minutes, he spoke.  
"It is a building engineer. He wars an elegant dress, but he has lime under the soles of shoes, and his hair is crushed, because he kept them under a protective helmet."  
"It could be a mason at the end of the workshift who like to dress smart."  
"No: his hands are too smooth and he hasn’t the muscles of those who carry out physical work."  
"Wow, I hadn’t noticed."  
Sherlock shook his head disapprovingly.  
"This is because you look, but you don’t observe."  
John laughed and lay down on the grass.  
"I could observe a hundred years, but I could never do what you do."  
"It's like math: you don’t commit yourself enough."  
John's cell phone rang, preventing an answer. It was Jeanette, his almost girlfriend; John turned on his side and the two eventually agreed on where to meet.  
"Jeanette and I wanna go to the ice rink. Would you like to come as well?"  
John turned his head, but Sherlock was already gone.  
Sometimes his friend showed this shady side of his demeanor, like a sky that suddenly became cloudy.  
Sometimes they were talking about and, for no reason, Sherlock got up, said he had things to do and left. Other times, like this, he just disappeared without a word.  
At the ice rink, John ended up arguing with Jeanette, because he thought to the strange behavior of his friend all the time, she accused him of being distracted and he said she was being suffocating.

  
After that episode, however, finally John decided to put into practice the advice of his friend, and observed his behavior more closely.  
Often, when they were together, Sherlock was okay: he explained math to him, deduced passersby, or spoke with enthusiasm of some wacky science experiment he was leading, with a broad smile and his eyes twinkling.  
So, what produced such a sudden change of mood?  
John found out what the day he received a call from Melissa (yes, with Jeanette hadn’t worked).  
And, indeed, he just had to observe to understand: since the first ring, Sherlock’s body stiffened and his eyes clouded.  
Literally: his eyes took on the colour of a gray cloud bearer of storm.  
"Melissa wants to go to the movies."  
"I see," Sherlock’s voice remained normal, but he didin’t look at his face, his eyes on the textbook in front of him.

  
The sudden change of mood of Sherlock appeared again, and always when John phoned or was with a girl.  
Was it possible that Sherlock was jealous?  
Yet he had never hinted that he liked John.  
_"Or maybe he did, and you, again, haven’t noticed."_ he thought.  
Sherlock had no other friends beyond him, but John didn’t doubt that he could have other friends, if he had wanted. But Sherlock didn’t want the company of other people, only his.  
Girls?  
Sherlock spoke of them as a scourge of society, and he had never had a girlfriend.  
So maybe yes, Sherlock had told that he liked John, in his way.  
And did he liked Sherlock?  
It was undeniable that he loved spending time with Sherlock, and it wasn’t only for the tutoring math. Even Melissa, as Jeanette, had accused him of being aloof and inattentive when they were together and they had split up. But then, spending time with Sherlock was much more interesting.  
So John decided to find out if he was right, and one afternoon, while they were studying at Sherlock’s home, John closed his book and looked at him.  
"I have a problem."  
"Which passage of the textbook you don’t understand?"  
"No, it’s not about that. There is a person that I like and I’d love to go out with this person, but I don’t know where I can go. "  
Immediately, Sherlock’s posture stiffened and his eyes grew stormy: oh yes, he had been right.  
"Just take her where you go with the others. Usually the girls you choose are so stupid that they don’t even know where they are."  
"Ah, but I can’t: this person is special to me, not like any other. Where you'd go, Sherlock?" John asked with a big smile.  
Sherlock's hand that held the pen squeezed it so hard that his knuckles whiten.  
"I don’t go out with anyone, you shouldn’t ask me such a question."  
"It’s essential that you answer."  
"But why?" Sherlock exploded, looking almost angry, and John decided he had tortured him enough.  
"Because you are the person I want."  
Sherlock blinked quickly several times, then he looked away.  
"Don’t make fun of me."  
"I would never do that."  
"You go out only with girls."  
"Well, it didn’t gone well so far. And I did not notice that the right person for me was so close."  
"How did you figure out that I liked you?"  
"For once I followed your suggestion: I have observed."  
John leaned over the table, placed his lips on Sherlock’s, and his friend wasn’t cloudy anymore.


	9. Isolated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the angst!

John parked his car along the roadside, went out, clutched his coat to shelter from strong winds and observed the isolated cottage that was on top of the footpath, the only building within kilometers in the desolate moors.

It hadn’t snowed, so the meadows showed merciless dead and yellowed grass, covered with a thin layer of frost, which made the landscape even more bleak, if possible.

A dim light behind one of the windows confirmed that he hadn’t traveled in vain at least, even if he didn’t understand why Sherlock had gone there, away from the world.

Or perhaps he understood, and it was the reason why he had come.

On December 24, John and Mary had organized a party for his daughter and his friends of the kindergarten; they invited Sherlock, too, but he didn’t come and his phone rang all day invane, and likewise for the next three days, until John, worried, asked news to Mycroft, and he had given that address, also telling him that his brother wasn’t on a case.

So why he had left London?

(Had he left him?)

With each passing month, Sherlock seemed more and more distant, isolated, just as the lonely cottage on top of the hill, which now seemed like an impregnable fortress. Sherlock had always been sullen and unapproachable with other people, but not with him. John had always had a special place beside Sherlock, but now he felt more and more as if he were about to lose him. And he was scared.

He knocked on the door and heard muffled footsteps approaching, then Sherlock opened the door.

If he was surprised by his appearance, he didn’t show, but looked at him without saying a word. He was wearing a striped cotton sweater blue and green, sweat pants, and he was barefoot. He looked tired.

"Hey, can I come in? If you continue to keep the door open, the house will freeze."

Sherlock moved away from the door and sat on the window frame to the opposite side of the room, where there was a cup of tea waiting for him.

"There's more in the pot, if you want."

"Thank you."

The interior of the cottage was even more bleak than the outside: in the only room there were a stove, a small refrigerator, a table with two chairs and a sofa bed, on which Sherlock had spread a blanket, and a bathroom beyond a door.

Nothing else.

John poured the tea and then turned to him.

"If you didn’t want to come to the party for the kids, it was enough to tell me, you didn’t need to come this far," he tried to joke.

"Why have you organized it in the first place? You don’t know many of the parents of the other children, and those who you know, are obnoxious."

"I know, but it’s something that must be done, for civility and good manners."

"I don't do things out of politeness" Sherlock replied abruptly, resting his cup of tea on the window sill.

"I know” John thoght and frowned “Do you think I'm trying to change you? To institutionalize you?"

Sherlock shrugged and didn’t answer, looking at the nothing beyond the window glass.

"It’s not like that” John insisted “I just want you to be part of my family."

"As Uncle Sherlock?" He asked in a tone of voice that wanted to be neutral, but that couldn’t hide a hint of spite.

"Also like that, if you like."

Actually John would not exactly for Sherlock to be a part of his family, but of that other part of his life, the part made of investigations, chases, shootings and ill-timed laughter at the crime scenes. The part of life that belonged only to John and Sherlock.

Only two of them against the rest of the world.

Again, Sherlock didn’t offer him any pretext to continue the conversation and remained silent.

"Why are you here, Sherlock?"

"I think you should ask the same question to yourself."

"I…"

It wasn’t that John didn’t know the answer to that question. He knew it, and for a long time. Just, he didn’t know how to express it in words, so he walked across the small room, stopped in front of Sherlock, locking him against the window, and kissed him, pressing his lips tight against Sherlock’s.

John felt him tremble violently, but Sherlock didn’t respond to his kiss and kept his lips closed tightly. When John pulled away from him, he saw that Sherlock’s eyes were closed and his face was almost in pain, as if he had expected and feared that moment for a long time.

"No," Sherlock murmured finally.

"Why?"

"You know very well why."

"Maybe we could..."

"What you're asking me, John, to be your illict lover?"

"I don’t know. I just know that I miss you, I miss what we had together, and I don’t want to lose it. I don’t want to lose you," he concluded with a heavy sigh.

"I made a vow at your marriage, and I will keep it: I'll be there for you when you need me, but I will not do this."

"Why? I know you want it as I want."

"I want it - Sherlock whispered - more than anything else in the world."

"So..." John came up to kiss him again, but this time Sherlock kept him at a distance with his arms.

"Damn Sherlock! I'm trying to find a compromise, here!" John shouted.

Sherlock shook his head.

"Not on this. You can ask me again to kill for you, to die for you, and I will. But you can’t ask me to be your dirty little secret."

"I’d never consider you like this this - John whispered, horrified - it's just that..."

"But that's what I would be."

A wave of nausea swept over John: what kind of a person he was to have only thought to have an illicit affair with Sherlock? To spend some time with him when he needed it, and then to go home as if nothing had happened?

Sherlock had given all himself to John, all his great heart that had strenuously denied to have, John couldn’t give him only the crumbs and put him in the second or third place in his life: in a relationship could not and should not be room for other people.

"You have made a choice, John, and every choice has consequences," Sherlock said.

"And what if I were no longer sure of the choices I made?"

"It is not a decision that can take on the spot."

John understood: whatever he chose, someone would suffer; if he had chosen Sherlock, then he couldn’t have been a completely present father in the life of his daughter, if he had chosen Mary again, Sherlock would shy away from him more and more, until he became an acquaintance of many. The very idea made him sick, but Sherlock was right: he couldn’t make that decision on the wave of emotion without pondering.

"I think you should go now" with this Sherlock stood up and opened the door for him.

"I'm sorry, I acted like a jerk" John muttered on the doorway.

"It does not matter. Have a safe trip."

John would have wanted for Sherlock to care, to be angry with him, to show that he wanted him. But John knew very well why he didn’t acted like that: Sherlock didn’t want to influence him in any way, because this decision had to be his alone, so that one day he had no regrets.

He returned to the car and laid his head on the steering wheel: it would have been a very long journey.


	10. Hazy

The two naked bodies rolled on the bed, entwined tightly, and made the cover drop to the floor.

When John finally had Sherlock beneath him, he planted a playful kiss on his lips.

"If the mistletoe does that to you, I'll leave it hanging in the kitchen throughout the year" the doctor joked.

"I confess a secret: it’s you, not the mistletoe" Sherlock whispered in his ear, with that voice low and sinful, and a strong shiver run down John’ spine.

"I’ll make the most of this information," John said, slowly sliding down.

"If you want we can... god!" Sherlock started and immediately stopped, words turning into a long moan when John closed his lips around his nipple, sucking and tormenting it with his tongue up to make it harden.

"You were saying?" John muttered, going up with his mouth along Sherlock’s body towards his next goal, the long and pale neck that was offered to him now that Sherlock had thrown his head back.

Sherlock cleared his throat and tried to pick up the thread of his thoughts, volatilized because of the wonderful things that John’s mouth could do on him.

"There are other... uh..."

He stopped again under the onslaught of his lover, busy to leave a hickey near his Adam's apple.

"Yup? I’m listening."

"If you continue like this, I'll never finish a sentence" Sherlock muttered, but without any animosity.

John chuckled and then raised himself on his elbows to look into Sherlock’s eyes.

"You've discovered my evil plan. Seriously, what's wrong, love?"

Sherlock stroked his back with the tips of his fingers and shook his head.

"Nothing. It's just that there are other positions, you know... I'm new at this, but I’m not adverse to experiment something different" he whispered quickly.

John lowered his head again to kiss him on the neck and pretend not to see that Sherlock was blushing (god, he adored his bouts of shyness during intimacy).

"No, I like this. Do you like it?"

Sherlock’s fingers paused a moment, then went back to draw abstract forms on his skin, and his lips parted in a smile.

"I like whatever you do, John. Don’t be deliberately obtuse. "

John rubbed himself on him and Sherlock spread his legs to give him room.

"Idiot" John muttered affectionately, biting his shoulder and running his hands along his sides.

They were lovers for less than a month, and in the future they would definitely find time to experiment everything that came into their heads, but at the moment John was in love with the simple missionary position, because it allowed him to kiss Sherlock’s lips incessantly, those full and plump lips on which he had always fantasized.

But above all, this position let him watch what he considered a small miracle: when John's fingers touched his most intimate parts, Sherlock stopped thinking, his composure crumbled, his eyes, ever watchful and careful, became hazy and unfocused, he abandoned himself completely to John, soul and body, naked, without reservations, without shame.

And it was beautiful.

It was the most beautiful thing on which John had laid eyes.

But what made him mad with love, was that he was the architect of the transformation of his lover, that he alone had the power to turn off Sherlock’s brain and light his senses.

"What are you thinking?" Sherlock asked, tracing the edge of an ear with his index finger.

"I’m thinking of you."

"Me too” Sherlock whispered slowly, as if he was revealing the most forbidden secret “When we're together like this, I can’t think of anything else, just of you, and your name is the only word in my mind."

John felt his eyes sting hearing the unexpected confession and swallowed hard.

"Not good?"

"No, love, that's very good."


	11. Freezing

Being thrown by a criminal into the pond of an abandoned mansion in the middle of December did deteriorate John's already bad mood.

He asked Sherlock to stay together, but when the two thieves had separated, the detective went in pursuit of the closer one, leaving John to face the other.

The sleuth never listened to him.

The former soldier emerged from the putrid and smelly water and jumped on his opponent, knocking him out with a deadly series of punches, then ran toward the house looking for Sherlock, regardless of being soaked in a freezing weather. He turned on the flashlight and inspected the rooms on the first floor, up to find his friend lying on the ground in one of them.

"Sherlock!" He bent over him and proded him gently: he was breathing, heartbeats were regular and he only had a large lump on the head. Probably the criminal was able to attack him from behind, knocking him out, and after a few seconds Sherlock recovered.

"John..."

"Get up slowly: you were hit on the head."

"Is he still here?"

"I don’t know."

The heavy door that closed behind him answered to his question: yes, the thug was still there, and now they had been locked in that room. John leaned against the door and pushed, then tried to kick and shouldered, but it didn’t budge.

"It’s useless, this door is old, but it’s solid wood," the doctor sighed, rubbing his shoulder.

Behind him Sherlock typed a message on the phone.

"I texted Lestrade telling him where we are: a patrol will be here as soon as possible to free us. But you” he looked up at him, noting his condition “are wet."

Only now, as the adrenaline subsided, John realized that he was cold, his body was trembling violently and couldn’t stop shivering.

"Unfortunately I had an unexpected bath."

"Undress" Sherlock said suddenly and, instinctively, John wrapped his arms around his chest.

"What?"

"Take off your clothes: they’re wet and you're freezing."

"And do you believe that I feel less cold once naked?"

Sherlock muttered a curse under his breath, approached John and started to undress him unceremoniously, ignoring his protests, then opened his large coat and hugged him, holding him tightly against him.

"Heat body - he explained - is the best way to keep you from freezing."

Sherlock's arms stroked his back with energetic movements to warm him, while John remained rigid as a stockfish, still shocked by the bold gesture of his friend. Yes, rationally he understood that this was to keep him warm, but it wasn’t less embarrassing.

"You should put your arms around my waist, too, and if you open your legs, we could be closer."

"Uh... but..."

"For heaven's sake, John! I'm trying to help you."

Eventually the former soldier did as Sherlock had suggested, because he was very cold at that point. He circled Sherlock’s waist with his arms and buried his cold face in the crook of his armpit, enjoying the warmth that emanated Sherlock’s body.

Sherlock tilted his head, resting it on John’ shoulder, continuing to rub his back, but with less energy now. It looked more like a caress and his cold numbed brain thought that it wasn’t unpleasant at all.

"John," Sherlock whispered, in a voice much lower than usual. It was sweet, almost intimate, and John’s body reacted instantly with a very inappropriate erection.

Both of them felt it, but Sherlock didn’t flinch at all, even clung to him even more, instead John was drowning in embarrassment and shame.

"I don’t…"

"Hush, John, it’s alla fine," he whispered slowly.

"No, it’s not good at all!"

"Why?" Sherlock asked, confused.

"Are you really asking? I'm not gay!" He shouted.

"It wouldn’t seem" Sherlock replied sarcastically.

"No, this is... it's just a normal physiological reaction, I would react the same way if I were hugged by a bear. It means nothing."

Sherlock stiffened and tightened his lips. He should have been accustomed to John strenuously denying to have feelings for him. It was nothing new, but this time, for a brief moment, he had hoped, and then it hurt like hell.

"Patrol car is here."

"Oh god... get away!" Panicked and utter embarrassed, John put hands on his chest to push himself away from Sherlock, but a moment later he found himself alone, naked and shivering, because Sherlock had moved abruptly from him first, turning his back to him.

"Cover yourself, or who knows what they'll think," Sherlock said in an ironic voice.

John remained paralyzed for a moment, realizing that he had been stupid and insensitive, then pulled on his jeans and shirt as the police broke through the door: he wanted to have a few minutes alone with Sherlock, because he know he had said a word too much and his friend was hurt.

The ride to Baker Street was very quiet: every so John made some comments, but Sherlock didn’t answer him, his face turned to the window and, once he gets home, locked himself in his bedroom without even wish him goodnight.

In the following days Sherlock didn’t talk to him, acting as if he didn’t exist, and John knew that it wasn’t one of his usual stages of the "sometimes I don’t talk for days to end", because with Mrs. Hudson he was behaving as usual.

No, that hostile silence was addressed to him, and this time John knew he deserved it: he had seriously exaggerated.

A couple of days later a nurse fron the clinic asked him out: John didn’t really want to accept, but the situation at home was really tense and he finally agreeded.

"I have a date tonight” he announced to Sherlock “Don’t wait up for me."

The detective didn’t even look up from the newspaper.

"I had no intention of doing so."

"Uh..."

"We're not together, John” he said very slowly “So why would I wait up for you?"

John took his wallet, slammed the door with more force than necessary and walked angrily toward the Tube: he had enough of passive-aggressive attitude of his friend. Why he had to point out at every opportunity that the two of them were not together?

His steps slowed to a stop at all, when he realized that Sherlock’s words were no different from those he pronounced every time someone asked if they were together.

_"We are not a couple!"_

_"I'm not gay!"_

It wasn't nice at all to be on the other side.

 

"Want to come to my place for coffee?" Tracy asked after dinner, touching his ankle with the toe of her shoe.

John instinctively moved his feet under the chair and realized that no, he had no desire to go with her.

"Uh, I'm pretty tired, to be honest, I'd rather go home."

She stiffened in his chair and her smile became very formal.

"Oh. Okay."

John came home before midnight and was surprised to see the lights on in their apartment: in spite of what he had said, Sherlock was still up. He was happy, because he felt the need to apologize and talk to him; he climbed the steps, but froze on the threshold: Sherlock was sitting on the couch with a stranger and they were kissing so intently that they hadn’t heard him.

"Sh-Sherlock?" John gasped in disbelief.

"Oops, er..." the stranger stammered with an apologetic smile, breaking away from Sherlock.

Sherlock, however, didn’t flinch at all.

"Darryl, this is John, my flatmate."

"Maybe we shouldn’t have..."

"Nonsense. John always brings her girls at home, so there’s no problem. But maybe you prefer to move in my room?"

"Yes, it's better."

John had been watching them all the time with wide eyes without saying a word, motionless, shocked; Sherlock and Darryl went past him and closed themselves in his bedroom, and John had never felt so cold in his life.

No, it wasn’t nice to be on the other side.

It hurt like hell.

He went up to his room upstairs like a robot and fell on the bed, realizing only then how much he had been stupid: he liked Sherlock, he liked him a lot, but he had never fallen in love with a man, he didn’t think he could do, and he had never been able to reconcile the two parts of himself. It was the reason why every time someone asked if they were together, he was always so defensive. But while he was procrastinating, never having the courage to admit to himself what he felt, obviously Sherlock got tired of waiting and had found someone else.

He would have given anything to be hugged again by Sherlock, his voice whispering "John" so sweetly.

 

After closing the door of the bedroom behind them, Darryl stopped him.

"What are you doing?" Sherlock asked, frowning.

"Instinct of self-preservation," said the other.

"First, at the pub, you didn’t seem like you were opposed to a one-night stand."

"Put it this way, hun: you're a knockout, and only a blind man would decline you, but I understand clearly that you do it just to hurt John, and I'm not going to be used in this way."

"You're wrong," Sherlock said, but when Darryl gave him a good-natured look, he shrugged and looked away.

"Anyway, it's useless” Sherlock muttered “John made himself clear in every possible way: he isn’t interested in me at all. He’d rather freeze to death than to be near me."

"Are you sure? Because his eyes tell a different story."

Darryl began to undress and Sherlock was perplexed.

"I thought you said you didn’t want sex."

"I don’t want, in fact. But if your flatmate has behaved really as you say, then he deserves to suffer a little, so let's him believe what he wants to believe” Darryl lifted the covers and lay down on the bed “Please, just tell me you don’t snore."

 

John found it difficult to fall asleep, he continues to roll over in bed, imagining what was happening Sherlock’s room; he tried to say that it was none of his business, but he failed and was tormented by a thousand questions.

Was it only a one-night stand?

Waht if Sherlock liked this Darryl and wanted to see him again?

At about six in the morning he decided it was pointless to stay in bed and stood up; he had just put the kettle on for tea, when Darryl quietly left Sherlock’s room. John prayed that he didn’t want to make conversation, but, as often happened, his prayers remained unheard.

"May I have a cuppa?"

"If you want tea, you have to wash a mug, because they’re all dirty" John growled, unable to restrain himself. To hell with politeness: if only he thought about him and Sherlock together, he felt an irrepressible fury grow inside him.

Darryl leaned against the fridge with his arms crossed and looked at him with a smirk.

"Do you talk like this also to your girlfriends?"

"I don’t see how this is your business."

"Shall I tell you what I see?"

"No, but I'm sure you'll tell me anyway."

Darryl broke away from the refrigerator and walked towards him.

"I see a man who clings desperately and without reason to his heterosexuality, and doing this he's losing a drop dead gorgeus man. A sexbomb, I dare to say.."

"Watch out” John warned with deadly low voice “I've killed people for less."

Darryl was unimpressed and continued: "I have Sherlock’s phone number, and if you don’t decide to remove your head from your ass, I’ll come back. And this time I'll be serious."

Sherlock left his room at that moment, and gave both a quizzical look, while Darryl kept his eyes fixed on John.

"So? Must I get serious?"

John straightened his shoulders: he feared he had lost Sherlock and this made him realize how much he cared for him, and would not have made other missteps. He marched purposefully toward Sherlock, grabbed the front of his robe to draw him to himself and kissed him with all his heart; after a brief hesitation, Sherlock circled his back with his arms and stroked it, as he did the other night.

"I’ll leave, then” Darryl announced to both of them “But if John continues to be an asshole, you know where to find me, Sherlock."

He left without being answered. Great pity, however, Sherlock was a wonderful kisser.

"He's right” John said when he pulled away for breath “I’m an asshole. It is not true that it meant nothing to be hugged by you and, I would not have reacted the way I reacted with anyone else."

"Like I said, it's all fine," Sherlock said, and took John’s head in his hands to claim another kiss.


	12. Indoor

John reached out on the mattress looking for Sherlock, but he met only already cold sheets; he opened his eyes and sighed: typical of Sherlock to not understand the charm of staying and lounging in bed until late. After their first night together (a fantastic, unforgettable, fuelled by mind-blowing sex night) he had hoped to spend the morning cuddling his new boyfriend slash love slash light of his life, but it wasn’t a tragedy: there would be endless mornings to spend together.

However he had no intention of getting up: he was still sleepy and deliciously sore, and if the muffled sounds that came from outside were a clue, it was still snowing, so he plumped up the pillow, covered himself better and closed his eyes again.

He didn’t sleep deeply, but it was enjoyable nonetheless to lie in the enormous bed of Sherlock thinking to all the things they did the night before.

He heard Sherlock moving between the living room and the kitchen, and it seemed also that a few times the footsteps of the detective came to the threshold of the room, and then go back again.

Finally, an hour later, the door handle was lowered and Sherlock took a few steps toward the bed; John turned and smiled, patting the mattress to invite him to sit down.

"I thought you were still asleep."

John stretched with a blissful sigh.

"No, I'm awake for a while."

"Then why you don’t get up?"

"Because I’m not working today, so I'm going to stay indoor all day. In this bed, to be precise."

"Are you feeling unwell?"

"Never felt better."

Sherlock thought seriously about his answers, frowning, and John had to stop himself from laughing.

"But why?" the detective asked again, as he couldn’t understand John’s behavior.

At that point John started to laugh.

"Because there’s nothing to do and this is wonderful, because I can take it easy. And if you'll lie down here with me, you would understand, too."

"I'm not tired."

"We’re not obliged to sleep."

"Oh, do you want to have sex again?"

John laughed again and shook his head.

"No! God, Sherlock, I’m still exhausted from last night. Right now I would just spend some quiet time hugging my man."

Sherlock's lips parted in a shy smile as he repeated the last words of John.

"Your man?"

"We're both too grown for the term boyfriend, don’t you think?"

John lifted the covers, but Sherlock still hesitated.

"I'm afraid that I would end up ruining your good mood: you know that I don’t like inactivity."

"Just try it: if you don’t like, you are free to return to your experiment in the kitchen or to run at Barts to make Molly give you a human liver with cirrhosis. I promise I’ll not get angry."

Sherlock still didn’t look convinced, nor to try to lie down on the bed doing nothing, nor that John wouldn’t be angry at him if he had gone after a while, but eventually he let the silk robe slid from his shoulders and got into bed, lying on his back with hands on his chest, observing the ceiling.

"Now what am I suppose to do?"

"You really haven’t ever done it," John muttered incredulously, pulling himself up on one elbow.

"What?"

"Spending time in bed with the one you love, doing nothing."

Sherlock’s adam's apple moved up and down as he swallowed.

"You know I've never loved anyone before you."

"But last night you told me you’re not a virgin."

"Yes, but beyond the sex, I never wanted to do anything with these people."

John crawled next to him and put a hand on his.

"And now?"

"With you it's different."

"Good” John pulled him closer and kissed him on the forehead “Good."

He rested his head on Sherlock’s chest and left his hands wandering his body aimlessly, without hurry, gently kissing the skin that he could reach, but without any intent to go further, simply savoring the cozy warmth of Sherlock’s body and the scent of his shower foam.

A few minutes later John felt one of Sherlock’s hand through his hair and smiled: he had found something to do to pass the time, too.

"Your hair is amazing, John."

"Oh, come on! They are almost all gray now," the doctor demurred.

"No, it’s not true. I counted at least nine... no ten different shades of colours, from honey blonde to silver."

"And I thought to dye it."

"Don’t you dare do it!"

After the hair, Sherlock’s fingers inevitably found the scar on his shoulder, about which he asked a thousand questions: if he remembered the exact moment when he had been hit, if the tissue was insensitive, if he had kept the bullet.

"It’s really fascinating, you know? Sherlock let him know Sherlock, hovering the thumb over the flesh “And last night I haven’t devoted the necessary attention to it. "

"Well, I hope to have you kept busy with other things."

Sherlock raised one of John’s hand to his mouth and kissed the knuckles.

"Oh yes, you did."

Every so their feet were touching and their legs intertwined briefly, then they changed position, and meanwhile they kept on talking about everything that popped on their minds: marks and scars on their bodies, the most absurd patients at John’s clinic, and the more exasperating clients of Sherlock.

Never once the detective complained of being bored and when, a few hours later, John told him it was time to get up because he was hungry, he was astonished to find that lunch time was already long past. His mind had been completely absorbed by John, by his voice, his smile and his light touches, so he decided that from now on he would spend a few minutes every morning to cuddle his lover.

While the doctor was sitting on the edge of the bed to put on his socks, Sherlock hugged him from behind, kissing him on the neck.

"Now I think I understand the beauty of staying indoor doing nothing."

John turned his head and kissed him.

"Glad to be able to assist, love."


	13. Ice-cold

Moran put an ashtray on the corner of the blueprint of the building to preventi it from curling, and called his men.

"Let’s repeat the plan from the beginning."

"Christ, Boss, again?"

"Yes George, again."

It was the third work for a new client, a very wealthy stranger who paid well and without haggling on the price, so Sebastian Moran was determined to oblige him. Unlike the other two times, where they were heavy-handed, this was a fine work, clean and precise: they had to break into a very guarded building, penetrate into the vault in the basement, take a software on a pen drive and exit without anyone notice of them.

His men were more accustomed to use weapons, so he preferred to go over the details again because everything should be absolutely clear.

George got up and walked over to the blueprint.

"All right, we arrive at the parking lot beyond the railroad, cross the tracks, cut the wire mesh in this point and expect the security guard to pass over."

"Remember that the perimeter is checked every half hour."

"Yup. Then Scott opens the electrical box, turns off the cameras and the alarm system and remains there to check, we enter from the back door, go up to the second floor and, from there, we use the ventilation system to go down to the vault. After that…"

The look of the three mercenaries shifted to a young man who sat on a chair in the corner and kept rubbing his hands in a gesture that betrayed his obvious nervousness. He had been sent by their anonymous client to help in the operation, although Moran was less than thrilled to babysit a computer technician who had probably never left his office.

"Boss” Scott whispered “Do we really need to bring that dead weight with us?"

"I don’t like it, but the vaul has an electronic lock and none of us is able to open it, if not blowing it up. He must also check that the software is what our client is searching for."

At that moment the young man shifted in his chair and bumped his elbow in a stack of newspapers which fell to the ground. He picked them up with an apologetic smile and returned to torment his hands, even more nervous than before. It seemed to be about to soil his underwear in any moment, if he hadn’t already done so.

"Bitchy bitch" Moran sighed.

"I insist that we'd better leave him here” George insisted “He could simply explain us how to do and-"

"No, the client wants him to come, end of the discussions," Moran said in categorical tone, and the other two men didn’t say anything anymore.

 

 

At two a.m. they parked, checked their weapons and tools and left.

"It’s an all-glass building and the lights are on, so remember to stay away from all windows."

"You don’t need to say this to us, Colonel," Scott muttered.

"Enough: concentrate on your tasks and in less than an hour it will be over. You” he said to the IT “remain with me whatever happens."

"Yes, Colonel. Any suggestions in particular?"

"Don’t get yourself killed. Now let's go."

The group moved compact, passed the railroad and made an opening in the mesh, but before moving ahead, they crouched down in the tall grass, waiting for the guard to go away.

George held the mesh for them, then he repositioned it so that the cut was not visible. Scott raised his hand showing five fingers, then slid into the darkness toward the electrical box; Moran checked his watch and five minutes later he motioned to the other two men to move toward the back of the building. He opened the door with a picklock and went in, guiding them down the hallway of the ground floor, and pushing them into a closet waiting for another security guard to go away.

Moran had studied for hours the surveillance in detail and everything was going well, now they only needed to get to the second floor and use the main air conditioning pipeline to reach the vault.

They moved fast to the end of the corridor and up the stairs: Moran ahead, the IT in the middle and George covering their shoulders. They unscrewed the bolts of one of the panels of the air conditioning and quickly mounted a pulley with which Moran and the IT would drop to the basement.

"And what about him?" The young man asked, pointing to George.

"He stays here to hoist us again."

The two climbed down the pipeline and opened the panel to exit in a hallway. Moran repositioned carefully the panel.

"The vault is on the far right, over that corner. Wait for me to check-"

He turned to give final instructions to the other man, but he was no longer there; the Colonel swore silently and ran to look for him, but before turning the corner, he stopped, hearing voices: the rookie had been discovered.

"Shit," he hissed. No one should have been there, and now he should eliminate a witness.

Goodbye to a fine, clean work, then.

"What are you doing here?" the security guard asked to the IT in a threatening tone.

The other man chuckled: "My bosses have no pity at all, I have just finished working overtime."

"On this floor there aren’t any offices, so I would say we have a problem."

"No, no” the other man said in a sweet voice “There's no problem, sir, I assure you."

Moran leaned around the corner to kill the guard before he could alert the reinforcements by radio, but then he saw the IT’s face change from scared and nervous to calm, determined and ice-cold. In a fluid motion, he pulled a revolver from the waistband of his trousers and shot the guard in front of him, killing instantly, then turned to him with a quite different smile.

"Oopsy" he sang cheerful.

Moran had known many murderers in his life, but he had never met someone so serene after having shot someone, and he still couldn’t believe that the other man had deceived him into believing he was a poor naive, when probably he could stand up to him.

"You're not a mere technician. Do you really work for our client?" Moran asked, pointing the gun at him.

"Calypso 25A77R" he said, and the Colonel lowered his gun: it was the access code to the encrypted bank account where their fees were paid, and it was known only by him and the client.

"You…"

"Jim Moriarty, nice to meet you, Colonel Moran."

The man was incredible: he was acting as if they had met at a party, completely oblivious to the pool of blood that was spreading at his feet.

"Staying always behind the scenes it's boring!” Moriarty went on "I wanted to see up how your team works. Oh, by the way, congratulations, you are very efficient."

Moran checked his watch: "At the moment we are ten minutes late on the schedule: hurry up, open the vault and take what you need."

"I don’t need anything, this building and this business are mine."

"So, was it only a test?"

"Yup. I really hope you aren’t cross to me for this. Oh, of course I'll pay you anyway, I swear!"

Moriarty’s chutzpah was so blatant that the Colonel couldn’t even get angry.

"Did we pass it?"

"Full marks. I looked for years for a right-hand man like you, Moran: you know how to plan and organize things, and your men obey you without blinking."

"But you had totally deceived me, I can’t believe it."

"I know” Moriarty said with a brilliant smile “I had to work in Hollywood."

"What about the guard?” Moran asked, pointing to the dead man “did he worked for you?"

Moriarty grimaced, annoyed: "Yes, and he was a real incompetent! But if I had fired, the labor union would have tormented me no end: you have no idea what a hassle it is to deal with those people."

Moran shook his head and laughed: "You are completely nuts."

The other didn’t take it as an offence: "Maybe so, but what is life without a touch of madness? Come on, Tiger, it's time to talk business."

"Tiger?" Moran echoed, arching an eyebrow.

"It’s a bit early for 'honey', don’t you think?"


	14. Gusty

"Hurry up, John, or he will escape us!"

The former soldier did his best to keep the same pace of Sherlock on the stairs, but the long legs of the detective made the difference, and he remained far behind.

He heard a door open and close, then some quarreling, and when he reached the landing, a worker stopped him: "The top floors of the skyscraper are not finished, it’s dangerous."

John broke free of his grip and climbed the iron stairs, screaming Sherlock’s name.

Upstairs there were no walls, only beams and pillars, and John was hit by a strong gust of wind that forced him to protect his face.

He looked up and what he saw terrified him: Sherlock was balanced on a beam, one floor above, and was trying to stop the fugitive, but the man broke free and pushed him away, causing him to fall on the beam, and ran until the end of the structure, stripping of sweatshirt and trousers: under he was wearing a wingsuit with which he launched into the air and reached the roof of a lower building.

"That bastard," John growled, then he looked up at Sherlock, who was on his feet again and was walking on the beam to the point where the other man had thrown himself into the void.

"Sherlock, go back, these winds are dangerous!" the former soldier cried; his heart was racing and his knees were shaking: the combination of Sherlock plus great heights still caused him panic.

"A flash drive fell from the pocket of his trousers: there are the evidence of all his crimes on it, I have to take it."

The wind grew stronger and Sherlock opened his arms for balance, still advancing towards the small device that the gusts were pushing more and more towards the end of the beam.

"SHERLOCK, NO, DO NOT DO IT!" John shouted, climbing the pylon to reach for him.

The detective stopped immediately, as if John had used a spell on him, and at that moment a gust of wind made the flash drive to fly down: the device disintegrated on the asphalt and then was crushed by vehicles passing by.

"It’s not worth risking your life for this. Come on, let's go back."

John reached out and grabbed his arm, still worried: he would calm down only when they were back with both feet on the ground and indoors.

He guided him along the beam to the ladder that led to the floor, but when they landed there, Sherlock wriggled from his grasp without saying a word and walked away.

"That flash drive wasn’t so important” John insisted “now we know the face of the criminal and it will not take long for the police to catch him."

Again Sherlock didn’t answer and walked down the stairs without waiting for him, regardless of his calls, and once arrived on the street, he hailed a taxi and went away alone.

John shrugged: he didn’t care if Sherlock was angry for the loss of the device, as his life was worth infinitely more than a few data, and he was happy to have stopped him.

He prepared mentally to face a long week of angry silence, and waited for a taxi on the curb; without much surprise it took much longer to stop a car (he hadn’t the same magic touch of Sherlock), but when he arrived at Baker Street the detective wasn’t there and one of his trolley was gone.

"Where are you?" He typed quickly on the phone, but got no answer.

"That's great” he growled  “He took sulking on a new level."

As evening was approaching, he sent another message to Sherlock, that went unanswered, too, and at that point he began to worry a bit, so he sent one to Mycroft, asking him if it was a danger night.

He spared to inform the oldest Holmes about the details of the case, because, in one way or another, Mycroft always knew everything about his brother.

**Given what has happened in the skyscraper under construction, there will be no more danger night.**

**MH**

"What's that supposed to mean?" John asked, dazed, staring at the screen of his phone. Unfortunately he knew Mycroft enough to know he wouldn’t have any other information in addition to that cryptic message, so he tried to calm down: according to his brother there was no risk that Sherlock could take drugs, and probably he would return home once the anger had passed.

 

Sherlock had never felt so confused in his life: when John had shouted him to stop, he had listened to him with his mind and body. It never happened before: when he was concentrating on the Work he didn’t care about anything else, didn’t eat or sleep, didn’t listen to anyone, the words of other people didn’t even reach him, blocked out by his mind. Yet the alarmed voice of John had crossed that barrier as if it didn’t exist, and had gone straight to his heart.

Really, he understood why John was so scared: his friend was still thinking about his fall from the roof of Barts, even if it was irrational (the conditions were completely different).

So he could understand the behavior of John, but not his own.

Why he had listened to him? Why had he stopped? The flash drive was crucial and he was perfectly capable of walking on the beam without falling: he had a good balance and had calculated the strength of the wind, he was never in danger, then why did he stop? Why he had put John’s fear before the Work?

His mother knocked on the door of his room.

"Do you want to come with us for a walk? Your brother is here too."

"No."

Sherlock pulled the sheet over his head and continued to bask in his thoughts.

 

"Don’t get me wrong” his mother said, recovering her purse “I'm glad Sherlock came here, but he never leaves his room, so in the end it’s as if he wasn’t here. What has happened, Mycroft?"

Mycroft knew that his mother would have tormented until he spoke, but he decided to omit the fact that Sherlock had walked on a beam in an unfinished skyscraper.

"He put the concerns of John before his work."

"It’s not the first time he does it: Sherlock care for John more than anything else," his father said.

"Oh, I know, but he doesn’t ever really realize it: the other times he could always tell himself that he acted like that for other reasons."

"So what? He's in love: I find that’s a beautiful thing. And don’t make that face, Mycroft," her mother scolded him, seeing that the eldest son had rolled his eyes.

 

A week had passed, but Sherlock hadn’t come back home, and John didn’t know if he was more angry or worried. It would be Christmas in a week and he hadn’t yet decorated the house, because doing it alone seemed too sad; he missed Sherlock, the flat was too quiet without him, and his days were incredibly boring.

At the same time, however, he couldn’t believe that Sherlock was still angry because John had asked him to stop: did he really blame him for not wanting to see him fall?

Besides, a few days after that episode he had learned from Lestrade that the criminal had been arrested, but Sherlock hadn’t contacted him to ask him the details of the operation, so it was clear that he didn’t even care about the case, so why he was behaving like that?

There was no way to get an answer from Sherlock, because he didn’t answer to his messages and the phone rang empty, and John was getting frustrated, until one evening, thanks to a few glasses of whiskey too much, he decided to say in the voicemail of his best friend all he had to say.

"Do you want to keep a lifelong grudge just because I prevented you to die?” he shouted with his voice thicked by the alcohol “Fine by me, do as you wish, continue to act like a child, I don’t care! I will never apologize for having stopped you! What I did, I'd do it right now again and every time you are in danger, because... damn, you know very well why. You” John continued, his voice less certain “you know why, right? You know how much I care about you? You know you're the most important person in my life, right? That's why I will do everything to protect you and you just have to deal with it. And come back home, I miss you."

He dropped the phone on the floor and sat down heavily on the couch.

"You just have to deal with it” he repeated, before closing his eyes.

The next morning he was awakened by someone who shook him by the shoulder.

"You shouldn’t sleep on the couch, it’s not good for your back."

"Sherlock!" John shouted, opening his eyes and lifting, before his head reminded him that he had a terrible hangover.

He buried his face in the pillows and groaned like a dying man.

"I’ll give you some paracetamol."

A moment later Sherlock returned with a glass of water and two tablets, which John gratefully accepted.

"You're back."

"I heard your message. Do you remember?"

The former soldier wanted to be in better shape to deal with that conversation, but he would do it anyway, it was important; he straightened his back and looked into his eyes.

"Yes, I wasn’t that drunk. And I am firm on what I said: I regret that the flash drive has been lost, but I’ll never apologize for having stopped you. Your life” John said in a sweeter voice “for me is worth more than all the cases of the world."

Sherlock shook his head.

"The point is not what you said or you did, at least not entirely. The point is how I've reacted. You've asked me to stop and I stopped."

"Good."

"No, you don’t understand” Sherlock ran a hand through his hair and licked his lips “Once I wouldn’t have ever acted like that, I wouldn’t have listened to anyone, I wouldn’t ever allow anyone to interfere with the Work. But I listened to you."

"Oh."

Now John was beginning to understand the reasons of Sherlock’s reaction, apparently so exaggerated. Sherlock, who lived for his Work, claiming to be married to it, had put John’s plea before it. He understood also the meaning of the message of Mycroft, about the future absence of danger nights: John had asked Sherlock to quit forever with drugs, and he had done it time ago.

For him.

And this was a big deal for Sherlock.

It was also for him, to be honest.

John was equally important for Sherlock, more than anything else.

"You've changed me, John Watson” Sherlock muttered, lowering his eyes “Now tell me, what are you gonna do about it?"

John put two fingers under his chin, forcing him to look into his eyes again.

"Don’t worry, I intend to assume all the responsibilities" he said with a firm voice, before claiming his first kiss.


	15. Heated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The premise of this story is that eventually Sherlock had to leave for Serbia and in the meantime the marriage between John and Mary has collapsed without much fanfare.  
> Contrary to what I write usually, this is a Toplock.

It didn’t go as John had imagined.

Because, no use in denying, he had often fantasized about having sex with Sherlock since he came back to live in Baker Street; the nights were endless, with the thought of Sherlock away, in a hostile Country, on a life-threatening mission, and thinking about what they could do once his best friend came home, calmed him. And now, the farce that was his marriage with Mary completely forgotten, he could think about it without shame or moral restrain.

However, no, it didn’t go as he had imagined.

He had thought that he would welcome Sherlock with a hug, and then they would talk for hours, perhaps all night, and, if they found to be on the same page (and John thought that they were), they would eventually exchanged a chaste kiss and from there they proceeded calmly and slowly in their new relationship.

Nothing could be more wrong.

When Sherlock finally came home, he run up the steps and threw open the door; John smiled with joy and relief, and rose from his chair to meet him, but Sherlock was quicker, overtook him, took his head in his hands, briefly watched his face, reading everything there was to read on it, and bent over to kiss him as if his life depended on it, without shyness, without hesitation. Years and years of pain, sacrifice and unspoken things were swept away in an instant by their lips that were being sought and joined, like a dam that crumbles and overwhelms and deletes everything in its path.

John was baffled by such unexpected vehemence, but when the Sherlock’s tongue demanded access into his mouth, he participated with enthusiasm to the kiss, biting and being bite, and from there things got seriously heated. John simply turned off the brain and stop thinking that it was too fast, and surrendered completely to the hands and mouth of Sherlock.

Sherlock hooked his fingers into the loops of his belt and, without stopping the kiss, he began to drag him to his room, but John put his hands on his shoulders.

"In my room” John mumbled “I’ve what we need."

Sherlock looked at him, hungry and impatient, and dragged him again, this time on the stairs; he pushed him against the wall and kissed him again, making it really hard to John to find the right coordination to climb the steps. Meanwhile, Sherlock began to undress himself and strip him feverishly. They disseminated clothes along the way, and when they reached the door of the bedroom, they were wearing only underwear; Sherlock didn’t even wait to be on the bed and slipped his large and warm hand under the elastic of John’s underwear, stroking him so rudely it cut off his breath.

"God, Sherlock..."

John was already wet and embarrassingly hard, and Sherlock move his lips to his ear to growl his approval.

John would have never thought him capable of such passion, he had never felt so much desired, and the emotion overwhelmed him: he hid for a moment his face in Sherlock’s neck hugged him tightly, skin on skin, heart on heart.

"John," Sherlock murmured in a low, sensual voice, and the doctor realized that was the first word spoken by him since he was there.

"John," he repeated, with a hint of sweetness that melted the frenzy of his gestures.

"Yes," the doctor said simply, raising his head to look into his eyes.

Yes, he understood perfectly the tumult of emotions that stirred within Sherlock, because his feelings were the same.

Yes, he had no doubt about what they were doing.

Yes, Sherlock could claim what had always been his.

John freed him of the boxer with a firm hand, then grabbed his erection in turn, returning the sensual caresses, and Sherlock threw his head back, letting out groans so loud that John was afraid to come just by listening to him.

A second later they were lying on the bed and one of Sherlock’s hand was rummaging furiously in his desk drawer in search of the lubricant, moving objects with such fervor to make them fall to the floor.

"Hey, hey, easy" John whispered, stroking his cheek, but Sherlock loomed over him, dark curls framing his face, looking terrible and beautiful.

"No, enough wait, John. You're back, you're here, you chose me, and now” - he stroked John’s lips with his tongue “you are mine."

John lifted his head to claim another kiss, but Sherlock slid down, turning him unceremoniously; he grabbed John’s buttocks voluptuously in his hands and...

"Christ!" John choked a cry into the pillow biting the fabric, while every cell in his body quivered and sang under the onslaught of Sherlock’s tongue on his hole. He had never, never even in his wildest dreams, thought about it, and when Sherlock’s tongue pushed into him, he had to grab the base of his cock to keep himself from coming.

"Sh... 'lock... please, at this rate I..." he gasped, trying to make Sherlock understand that he couldn’t resist any longer, but nothing seemed to disturb Sherlock, intent on giving him the most sensual experience of his life. He took his mouth away from his hole, only to blaze a trail of kisses down his spine, up to his neck, where he stopped to suck firmly, while preparing him with his fingers.

"God” the doctor chuckled in an attempt to recover a minimum control of his mental faculties “you had to tell me to make a will, because I think I’m gonna die."

"You haven’t seen anything yet," Sherlock said, shifting his focus on John’s right ear, continuing to prepare him with a delicacy that contrasted with his other gestures, but that John understood very well: they were making love, and how passionate and unrestrained Sherlock was at the time, he wanted the experience to be the least painful as possible for John.

John’s body tensed, waiting for the long fingers to brush against his sweet spot, but Sherlock seemed to carefully avoid it; John groaned in disappointment and pushed stronger against him, but Sherlock didn’t satisfy him.

"Not yet. It must be unforgettable," he muttered, and then returned to work wonders with his lips on his ear.

"I'm ready" John gasped.

"Are you sure?” Sherlock asked, for the first time hesitant “You never imagined it this way, always the other way round. I know, I read it in your body."

"No deductions tonight" John ordered and dragged Sherlock above him, devouring his lips; Sherlock’s erection was hot and throbbing against his stomach: he was at his limit to and John pumped slowly his cock to relieve himself.

Sherlock positioned himself between his open legs and pushed slightly, then stilling for John to get adjusted, and then buried himself into him with almost maddening slowness, until John grabbed his biceps and begged him to move faster.

Only then Sherlock rocked his hips in a firm push that sent the tip of his cock against his prostate and John arched as crossed by an electric jolt; his hands gripped the sheets convulsively and his breathing became fast and broken.

"God, do it again."

Sherlock pumped into him, trying to keep a slow pace, but the heat and the pleas of John caused him to lose control: too much frustration, too many repressed feelings, and he pushed hard and fast in him, while John pulled him by the shoulders to kiss him again.

The last minutes were a hazy and heated delirium of chemical reactions and sensations and orgasm swept them away leaving them exhausted, Sherlock completely plastered on John, unable to move, while the doctor was trying in vain to remember a screw that could be compared to what he had just experienced. He brought a hand through the sweaty curls of his partner, still shivering.

"If I am yours, you are also mine" he muttered sleepily.

"Obviously."

Soon In short, he would have had to raise and clean them up, but now John just wanted to stay  in that enveloping cocoon of warmth and passion.

No, it didn’t go as John had imagined, but, of course, he had nothing to complain about.


	16. Long

**I just left Barts laboratory, I should be to Angelo’s in twenty-five minutes, snow permitting.**

**SH**

Perfect, I'm going there, too.

JW

 

Actually John was at the restaurant for over an hour, to check that everything was perfect: the table by the window, the same of their first time there, and candles, this time two, ready to be lit.

He took the little box from his pocket and opened it, looking at it in contemplation.

"If you look at that ring again, you’ll eventually consume it, Dr. Watson," Angelo said with his jovial voice.

"I keep wondering if he will like it: it's hard to choose jewelry for him, and then maybe he will not even wear it because it bothers him, or perhaps he would prefer to leave things as they are and-"

"Now calm down and sit down, you’re hyperventilating” Angelo ordered, then turned to his wife “Costanza, bring something strong for the doctor."

"Er... I don’t think I should drink on an empty stomach."

But the restaurateur handed him a glass of liquid fire and urged him to drink.

Indeed John felt calmer, and scratched his head, embarrassed.

"I don’t know what came over me."

"A bit of anxiety is perfectly normal, but you have nothing to worry about: Sherlock will say yes. Since the first time I saw you, I thought you were made for each other," he assured him.

Rationally, John knew Angelo was right: now he and Sherlock were together for three years, things were better than he had ever dared to hope (their discussions were limited to a few harmless bickering), and John felt it was the time to take that step, to declare to the whole world his eternal love for Sherlock, but he was tense and excited nonetheless.

"Now I leave you, Dr. Watson, I have to check that everything is cooked to perfection."

"Thanks again for everything."

When John had mentioned to Angelo that he wanted to ask Sherlock to marry him right there in his restaurant, the Italian man had gone into raptures: he worked his better menu with all Sherlock’s favorite foods, and he had even kept the tables around their empty, so that they weren’t disturbed by the noise of other people.

It was a surprise and John had done anything to keep hidden his intentions to Sherlock: he chose the day when they had met for the first time at Barts, telling him he wanted to celebrate that anniversary, so he could justify dinner at Angelo’s.

He approached the window, eager to see Sherlock’s taxi to come, and watched the snow began to cover the streets: there was another reason he had decided to ask him to get married in winter, but it was a reason so mushy and romantic that he would keep it for himself.

That season of the year was like the path, long and tortuous, they walked to get to be happy. When he was young, his mother used to say that the winter was the shortest season of the year, but also the longest, and only now really understood what she meant: the years he spent away from Sherlock, denying them both a chance to be happy, had been long and cold, like the winter.

The man that was reflected in the glass of the window had a few gray hairs too many and some regrets on his shoulders, but in the end they did it.

And it was all that mattered.

Finally, a cab pulled up and Sherlock got out quickly, entering in the restaurant.

"Sherlock, welcome!"

Angelo went to welcome him, took him to the table where John was waiting, and lit the two candles.

"Sorry for the delay, but that idiot taxi driver wanted to take at all costs the busiest street, ignoring the alternative route that I had suggested."

"Never mind” John leaned over to kiss him tenderly “How was your day?"

"Oh, wonderful."

From there, Sherlock launched into a detailed description of all the evidence that he had found on the dead body fished out of the Thames, which had allowed him not only to discover the man's identity, but also how he had been killed and by whom.

Normal people would had never find acceptable a conversation like that in front of a plate of spaghetti alla carbonara, but to John it was absolutely perfect: he loved the enthusiasm Sherlock had as he told about his cases.

The delicious food helped John to relax, even though his left hand continued to touch the pocket of his jacket; and when the dessert arrived (an unforgettable tiramisu), Sherlock puored a glass of Moscato for both of them.

"Since you wanted to celebrate our first meeting, to the two of us," he said, lifting the calix.

John took a deep breath and licked his lips.

"Actually, it's not just for this. Okay,” he took the box, opened it and placed it on the table “William Sherlock Scott Holmes, will you marry me?"

Sherlock put the calix on the table so clumsily that overthrew it, as he continued to open and close his mouth to say something, but it was as if all the words were missing from his mind.

John, who had never seen him so astonished, began to quickly backtrack.

"If you don’t want, it doesn’t change anything between us, it was only an idea..."

"YES!”  Sherlock screamed so loud, that all customers of the restaurant turned to look at him “Of course I do, it's just that..."

"You didn’t think I wanted to marry you?"

"No, I would never have imagined it."

"Why?"

"I thought that after your marriage to Mary, you didn’t want to repeat the experience."

In fact John hadn’t thought even once in his previous marriage, while buying the rings and planned the perfect evening for his proposal: Mary was now behind, forgotten, and in his present and future horizon there was only a very special consulting detective.

"This time it will be completely different” John said, leaning in to kiss him again “because I'm not marrying a lie. Actually, I thought you were the one unwilling to accept: there was a chance you’d answer me that marriage is only an empty formalism, because we are already together and it wouldn’t change anything."

"No, it not like that. Actually, the other time, when I was at your side as the best man, I would have given anything to be in Mary’s place."

"Oh, love..."

Sherlock reached for the ring as if it were the most incredible thing he had ever seen.

"Can I?"

"Of course, it's yours” John took the ring from the box while Sherlock held out his right hand “And since you've already said yes, now you can’t change your mind."

"I have no intention to do so" he said, gazing the glittering gold band.

"I know you usually don’t wear jewelry” John muttered “and I want to tell you that you are not obliged to carry it if it bothers you."

"John, they should cut my finger to force me to remove it" Sherlock whispered, leaning to touch his forehead to his.

John closed his eyes and smiled: the long way had led to the most beautiful place.


	17. Snowbound

John moaned contently and pressed himself to Sherlock’s back: pity that he was on duty at the clinic on Christmas Eve, he would have remained happily in bed.

However, until the alarm sounded, they had time.

He opened his eyes to control the time on the phone to see how long they had, but he noticed that the light of day was already very intense.

"What time is it? - he mumbled, confused - Oh Christ, it’s eight o’clock! Why this fucking piece of junk has not rung?" He had to be in the clinic in less than half an hour, facing the traffic of Christmas Eve.

"I turned off the alarm clock” Sherlock said, turning on the other side to hug him “Call the clinic and tell them you’re not going today."

"What did you do?" John growled, feeling the anger rising fast.

"I'm not following a case, and there isn’t any interesting body at Barts, so I don’t want you to go to work today. I want you all to myself."

Sherlock slipped his hand under the pajama top of John, but he turned away abruptly and stood up, grabbing his clothes.

"How did you dare? Damn, Sherlock, I have commitments to be respected!"

"But John..."

"No, no Johns! I’m furious, Sherlock! I'm late and I'll have to apologize to other colleagues because of you."

Sherlock sat up on the bed and crossed his legs and arms, pouting.

"I don’t understand why you don’t stop working completely: your colleagues are all boring idiots and you don’t need the little money that they give you to diagnose rheumatism and colds."

John looked at him narrowing his eyes in anger.

"Maybe you don’t care at all, but I spit blood to be able to graduate in medicine and I really want this job! So no, forget it: today I’ll not stay at home with you."

"But I'm bored!"

"Oh sure, as usual it’s alla about what want, what I do is never important, right? You're a damn egoist!" He shouted, closing the door of the bathroom; he washed his face and brushed his teeth, got dressed hurriedly and left the house without having breakfast and even without saying goodbye to Sherlock, who in the meantime had risen and was babbling a few words of apology that he wasn’t going to listen, not after his boyfriend had disparaged and belittled his work.

"And don’t call inventing a nonexistent emergency! I don’t want to hear you until I get back" John hyelled from the stairs.

 

 

Miraculously John found a taxi and managed to show up at the clinic with only ten minutes late and there wasn’t any patient waiting for him.

"I don’t think that today we will see many people” his secretary said “forecasts announced heavy snow in the afternoon."

Actually it started to snow insistently an hour later and, in short, the snowfall turned into a blizzard.

The secretary appeared at the door of his studio between one patient and the other and asked him if she could go home early.

"I have a dinner with my parents tonight and I would hate to be late."

To manage patients and also calls for appointments alone wouldn’t be easy, but in the end John agreed: after all, it was Christmas Eve.

At about two in the afternoon John was seriously worried about not being able to go home that night, because the snow intensified and he didn’t see anymore taxis and buses on the street. He hadn’t seen even patients, to tell the truth, and a part of him regretted not having listened to Sherlock and have remained at home, although it was still very angry with him: he wasn’t a pet or a rag doll which Sherlock could dispose of as he wished. Of course, spending the morning in bed with his boyfriend would have been infinitely more enjoyable than visiting people with a runny nose, but there were limits, and Sherlock always ignored them, which sent him into a rage.

Later in the afternoon he answered a phone call: it was Ryan Davin, director of the clinic, who was on vacation, lying on a white beach in the Canaries. John could hear in the background the sound of the waves and the cries of the children; he looked out the window, while the snow was covering the merciless city, and sighed with envy.

"Oh, hello John, why did you answered?"

"Here there’s a snowstorm, I sent Ellen home."

"For real? Instead here there isn’t a cloud in the sky" Davin commented cheerful and John was tempted to interrupt the communication “Anyway I wanted to talk to you."

"About what?"

"About the shifts of December 31th and January 1st: could you cover them?"

"But I'm already doing the shift today!” John protested “If you've forgotten, it's Christmas Eve."

"Yes, but, you see… Clarice has promised her mother to take her to Switzerland for the winter holidays, this would be the first new year as a married couple to Raj and his wife, and Qiang has just had a baby. You know that holiday periods are important for those who have a family."

"No, no, stop right now: I have a boyfriend too, Ryan" John pointed out: at the clinic everyone knew he was in a relationship with Sherlock, and the detective often visited him at lunch, to eat together.

'Well, it is not quite the same thing. You aren’t married, you know..."

"Neither is Clarice" John argued.

"John, don’t make things difficult, I almost already said yes to your colleagues."

"Without asking my opinion."

"I'm asking you now, and then, come on, your situation is different," his boss said again.

"Why? Because Sherlock is a man, so my relationship with him isn’t worth as that of others, our love is less true, less important?"

"N-no, of course not!” Davin tried to justify himself, stunned by the vehement reaction of John “It's just that you don’t have a family and you've more free time..."

"Sherlock is my family, and all my life” the former soldier shouted, losing his temper “Christ, Ryan, do you realize how insulting it is?"

He couldn’t believe he had staunchly defended his work in front of Sherlock, only to receive a homophobic treatment by all his colleagues.

"Look, now you are too upset to think rationally, I'll call you at another time, and we'll see, okay?"

"No."

"No?"

"I made the shift on Christmas Eve, then, by regulation, you can’t ask me to do that as well the New Year eve, unless my colleagues are all dying."

"But…"

"I have to go, Ryan, I’ve a patient now."

In fact there was no one, but if John had continued that conversation, he’d had covered his boss with insults untill he got fired.

He'd had enough, so now he would close the clinic to go home to his boyfriend and make peace with him. Sure, Sherlock had been selfish to turn off the alarm, but at least he did it because he loved him and wanted to be with him, not to treat him as a convenient stop-gap.

He should have stayed at home.

He came to the door of the clinic and he paled: there were at least twenty centimeters of snow accumulated against the door and on the street, the blizzard was even stronger and gusts of icy wind swept the streets; that morning he had worn the first shoes he had on hand (loafers with leather soles), so getting to the Tube station, quite far from there, was not a simple undertaking.

He consulted the local news to see just how bad the situation was, and a news in the foreground warned him that the Tube line he needed was closed for a problem until the following morning.

"I can’t believe I'm snowbound" he murmured sadly.

He sent a message to Sherlock to inform him that he couldn’t come back home that night, took some snacks from the vending machine and prepared to sleep on the uncomfortable little couch in his office, covered only by his jacket.

Sherlock had not called, maybe he took seriously his last words that morning about not wanting to hear from him.

John chewed some Oreo, played Candy Crush Saga but grew nervous for a level he couldn’t win, and eventually lay down on the couch, preparing to spend there the most horrible Christmas Eve he remembered, when he heard someone knocking on the front door.

Who could it be? No one knew it was stuck there, no one except ...

"Sherlock!" He cried, rushing to the door: yes, it was his boyfriend, hair and coat completely covered with snow that made him look like a yeti.

"Are you mad?” he shouted, dragging him inside “It’s snowing and the temperature is below zero!"

Baker Street was near an hour walk from there.

"Y-yes, I no-noticed."

Sherlock had ice crystals in his hair, his lips was blue from cold and he was shaking like a leaf, so John made him take off his coat and took him to his office, making him sit against the heater, then he took latex gloves and filled them with hot water, putting them on his hands and feet, to stimulate the circulation, and he wiped vigorously his hair with a towel.

"Why did you do that, Sherlock? You could die."

"I couldn’t leave you alone on Christmas Eve, and I wanted to apologize."

"No matter, I’m no longer angry," John said, stroking his cheek: Sherlock had crossed the city on foot during a snowstorm just for him, so he was absolutely and completely forgiven.

"I know you're a great doctor” Sherlock muttered, burying his icy face against his sweater “I didn’t intend to denigrate what you do. I just don’t like you spending so much time here, away from me."

"I know, love” John said “What do you think, I too would like to spend more time with you, but work is something I need, it makes me feel independent. Do you understand that?"

"Yes."

"But I think I could fire myself, find a clinic closer to home and reduce the hours. What do you think?"

"You shouldn’t do it for me, John."

"In fact it’s for us, today I realized that this place is not for me," he said, kissing his nose. He wouldn’t tell Sherlock about the veiled homophobic conversation he had with his boss: it was enough for him to feel angry and bitter, there was no reason to infect Sherlock, too.

“Have you warmed up? Show me your hands. "

"To tell the truth” Sherlock purred straight in his ear “I still feel cold. Maybe you can help me, doctor?"

"Oh yes, I'm going to help you through the night."


	18. Severe

Lestrade settled the headset, checked the volume and the absence of static, and then turned to Mycroft.

"Do you really want to stay here all the time? It might take a while."

They were in a van equipped for tapping: his job was to listen to the conversation between a criminal and one of Mycroft’s men, and, as soon as he had confessed his crimes, to arrest him.

Mycroft was sitting next to him and didn’t seem at ease in the small space.

"I have to be there. Decisions must be taken on what the criminal say."

"I guess I’ll never know what they are."

"Believe me, you don’t want to know."

"It's oaky. Is your spy a trustworthy man? Or should I prepare to have problems?" the inspector asked, checking the magazine of his gun.

"He’s an experienced man."

"But it's strange that you didn’t ask your brother to take up the case."

The names involved in the operation had made him turn pale.

Mycroft grimaced and sighed, annoyed: "I had nothing with which to blackmail him this time."

Gregory chuckled and Mycroft tsked in disapproval.

"The proximity to Dr. Watson is detrimental to him: I can’t believe he put before a weekend with him to a matter of national security."

"Instead I understand them very well: they have been together for a short time and are in love."

 

 

The criminal was late to show up and at about four in the afternoon Gregory began to show signs of impatience.

"Have you to go somewhere?"

"I should to take my children at school, but at this point I don’t have time. I have to call my ex-wife and tell her that I had a hitch” Lestrade drank the cold coffee and threw the paper cup on the floor “Of course, this means undergoing a half-hour lecture on her part, on how much I have always been absent and how that this was the cause that brought an end to our marriage. There’s also the risk that she decides not to let them spend Christmas with me out of spite, although this year it's my turn."

"Anthea can pick up the kids and take them to my house."

"Are you sure it doesn’t bother you?" Lestrade preferred to avoid at all costs an argument with his ex-wife, but didn’t want to take advantage of Mycroft.

"No problem."

"Well, thank you. But I have to call the school and sign an authorization to Anthea."

"No need," Mycroft said calmly, and typed a message to his assistant.

Sometimes Greg forgot that his man was able to start a war halfway around the world just by moving a finger.

Anthea picked up Tim and Russell, Greg’s sons, without any problem, and took them home to Mycroft's house.

"I'm hungry," Tim said just crossed the entrance.

"I have to go to the bathroom," Russell added.

Anthea was unimpressed and didn’t look up from her phone.

"The kitchen is down the hall, the nearest toilet is at the top of the stairs, first door on the left.

"And what can we eat?"

"Open the refrigerator and the pantry and see what is there. Maybe there is a surplus of cake on the table."

"Cool."

The cake held engaged the two children for about twenty minutes, but in the end, having nothing to do, they were bored and and went to Anthea, sitting in an armchair in the living room and always with their eyes glued on the phone.

"We should show her to mommy, when she tells us that we spend too many hours in front of a computer" Russell whispered to his brother.

"We get bored, Miss. What can we do?"

Anthea thought for a second. "Whatever you like."

"Are you sure?" Tim asked, a bit puzzled.

"Yup."

"Is there something we can’t do?"

"Aside from setting fire to the house and going out into the street, I would say no."

Tim was still very doubtful, but Russell nudged his brother and dragged him outside.

"This place is huge, let's explore."

"I don’t know if..."

"Come on, the woman said that we can."

The children amused themselves by slipping on a carpet in the corridor, hitting a couple of times a table on which was placed an ancient Chinese vase that miraculously remained standing, then, once fed up, they went upstairs.

In a disused room that had all the furniture covered with sheets, they found some cardboard boxes: a notice on them said that it was material for the lucky dip of the local parish. Russell, curious, opened it.

"Oh man, look at this."

In the boxes there were old Christmas decorations from the time when Holmes’ sons were children, as well as pencils, paints, colored chalk, brushes and crayons, all things accumulated in that house over thirty years and which Mycroft had decided to get rid of.

"How cool!"

 

 

Gregory had never said anything to not offend the Mycroft’ sensibility, but he always found his house very severe: usually he moved on tiptoe in there, in fear of breaking something worth several hundred pounds.

But that night when he opened the door, he saw that it wasn’t severe anymore, and knew immediately who the culprits were.

"Holy Christ, Myc, I'm sorry!"

The policeman turned to his companion, who was watching in awe the hallway of his house, without words for the first time in his life.

There were garlands, lights and Christmas decorations hanging from everywhere: along the handrail of the stairs, dangling from the chandelier, resting precariously on ornaments, hanging on the window handles.

But that was the least.

It looked like someone had detonated an atomic bomb of colors in the room: the portraits hanging on the walls now showed multicolored glasses, mustaches and beards, hats and bows drawn with crayons, the severe beige upholstery was a Pollock of paints, and puffs of color chalks covered stairs and floors.

"Tim! Russell!"

The two children, their faces painted like American natives, came down from the upper floor.

"Hi Dad! This place is so cool!"

Greg put his hands in his hair.

"Are you crazy? Why have you done this mess?"

"The lady who took us here has said that we could."

"What?"

"We went several times to tell her what we were doing, and she always said it was fine, though” Tim frowned “I'm not sure she was really listened: she never looked up from the phone. Anyway, she said it was okay."

Anthea left the living room and addressed to Greg and Mycroft a brief nod.

"Can I go now?"

Mycroft was still in front of the disaster and Greg answered for him.

"I think so."

Then reminded himself not to enlist the help of Anthea even to give water to a plastic plant and looked to his companion: "I'm sorry... I will wipe everything, I swear, and if they have broken something, I'll buy it back."

"No need, it's just a bit of color, nothing serious happened."

"But…"

"It seems that your kids had fun."

That scene had reminded to Mycroft the Christmases of his childhood, spent in the old house of his parents: both when he was alone and later when Sherlock was born, the vivid colors had always characterized the holidays.

There were the bright red of Christmas decorations and dishes that her mother used only at Christmas, the deep green of the tree, and crayons and pencils scattered throughout the house, because he and Sherlock, when they were children, loved to draw.

That little disaster had made him forget for a moment he was a powerful man who could change the fate of the world, and had brought back a period of his life that was happy and carefree.

"It’s all right, really” he said with a smile, holding for a while Greg's hand to reassure him, then he turned to the children “Pizza or kebab?"


	19. Snowed in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize if the specific terms of Harry Potter aren’t precise, but in Italian many names are different. I used various Wikia, but I still have doubts.

That morning everyone was talking about it in the Great Hall: the Gryffindor House had lost seven hundred points the evening before.

The perpetrators of this disaster, John Watson and James Bond, seventh year, sat in a corner of the table of their House, while all their mates watched them grimly, including children of the first year, and previously they had been severely reprimanded by the Prefect Greg Lestrade.

Molly, a Hufflepuff from the fourth year, came running and stopped near the Ravenclaw table.

"Q, Sherlock, good morning!"

The youngest of Holmes, same year of her, waved her hello, while Sherlock, sixth year, seemed to haven’t even heard her, but Molly didn’t take offence: Sherlock was an introverted boy and sometimes he didn’t speak for days, if not to answer the questions of the professors.

"I just saw the points of Houses” Molly continued “What happened?"

"Don’t you know?" Q asked, adjusting glasses on his nose.

"I was in the infirmary until this morning. You know, my last potion wasn’t really well... "

"Oh, right. However yesterday afternoon James Bond and John Watson have lingered on the Quidditch pitch and bewitched some bludgers for a special training, but they have lost control of them and bludgers have caused some damage around."

"To put it mildly” Sherlock said as he roused from his thoughts “the Owlery was unusable, there wasn’t any glass intact in the Herbology greenhouses, some bludgers hit the stables and all the Thestrals and Griffins ran away. "

"Oh dear. Well, this means that this year Gryffindor has no hope of winning the House Cup."

Seven hundred points at mid-year weren’t recoverable.

"They couldn’t win anyway” Sherlock said “This year the Cup will be of Ravenclaw."

"Are you sure, little brother?” Mycroft, seventh year, said from the Slytherin table “How are your grades in Astronomy?" he prodded.

"Likewise yours in Care of magical creatures," said the other brother, impassive. Mycroft hated any activity that would include a minimum physical effort, and couldn’t stand the smell of animals, so much so that in seven years, he had never gone even once in Owlery.

Molly reached Hufflepuff table and soon after came the mail.

John spotted the family owl from afar and tried to disappear under the table.

"Oh no..." he moaned.

"What?" James asked.

"My mother sent me a Howler."

"What else were you expecting?” Greg said, still furious with the two.

The fire-red letter was deposed before John’s empty bowl of cereals and all his housemates moved away cautiously.

"Open it” Lestrade suggested “Or it’ll happen a mess worse than yesterday afternoon."

Resigned, John broke the seal of the letter and the stentorian voice of Mrs. Watson, multiplied by a thousand, shook the windows of the Great Hall.

**"JOHN WATSON! YOU'RE A DISGRACE TO THIS FAMILY!"**

Almost all the students practiced on themselves a spell to plug their ears, but the voice of the letter reached them the same, albeit muffled.

**"IN TEN GENERATIONS OF WIZARDS WE HAD NEVER RECEIVED A CALL FROM THE HEADMASTER FOR MISCONDUCT! AND A ARTICLE WAS EVEN PUBLISHED ON THE DAILY PROPHET! I’M SO ASHAMED THAT THIS MORNING I DIDN’T LEFT THE HOUSE.**

**YOU CAN FORGET THE HOLIDAYS CHRISTMAS FOR THIS YEAR, YOU’LL STAY AT HOGWARTS!"**

With that letter crumpled and incinerated and John collapsed on the chair: that was a low blow! Only few professors would stay at Hogwarts for the holidays, even the Headmaster wuold go home to his family.

He turned to James, who had only received a standard letter from his adoptive mother, M.

"It's not that she wants to adopt me too, by chance?" He tried to joke.

James grimaced: "Oh, don’t be fooled. M simply want to lecture me in private, I’ll hear her complaints for this thing for all the winter holidays."

"I still don’t understand what went wrong."

"You're both idiots” Lestrade said to them “If you wanted to try a new spell, why you didn’t ask me first? We would have tested it beforehand in the Room of Requirement, where there would be no harm."

 _"Why didn’t we think of that?"_ was the unspoken question that occurred between John and James.

"But, in any case, how did the news ended up on The Prophet?" John asked, increasingly despondent: now the whole magical community knew what had happened at Hogwarts. Great, it would be a nice business card for when he sought work as Mediwizard.

"Kitty Riley” Sherlock replied, taking a seat at their table “I’m sure it was her: her father worked for the Prophet and in this period they have nothing better to publish."

"That's great," the Gryffindor muttered.

"John... uh..” Sherlock looked at his friend and then quickly lowered his eyes “I think it was an excessive punishment. Basically you hadn’t do it on purpose, and all the damages were repaired with magic."

John smiled for the first time since the evening before, and thanked his best friend.

Sherlock was happy: John was a selfless guy, always committed himself to the maximum for his House, both for the Quidditch tournament and the House Cup, and that was his last year at Hogwarts, and he wanted very much to do well.

 

Unfortunately, the bad news for James and John were not over: the next day, the last day of classes before winter holidays, the Headmaster called them in his office to tell they were suspended from the Quidditch team indefinitely.

James went to the dormitory to pack, while John sat down in front of the Black Lake to pull pebbles into the water, trying to let off some steam, and wrapped more tightly in the cloack against the wind: that horrible year had not even snowed a bit, it was just cold as fuck.

At one point he was approached by Irene Adler, seventh year, Slytherin, who was pushing her luggage with the help of the wand.

"I should have give you a gift, Watson," she teased.

"Why?" John asked grimly.

"The Slytherins have always had a bad name, but now we have been overtaken by Gryffindors, so thank you."

That was a low blow: John was the first Gryffindor of the Watson family and he has always been very proud of that, therefore, to have damaged his House made him feel bad enough without Adler’s spiced retorts.

"I'm also very curious to see how badly your Quidditch team will lose all the matches, without his two best beaters."

John's hand ran to the wand, but Sherlock's voice stopped him before he could get in trouble even more.

"Instead I’m curious to know what would happen if I told the Headmaster that three nights ago you were in the Forbidden Forest to pick up Cruelthorn, Irene."

John winced: Cruelthorn was a rare herb, that in places like Knockturn Alley could cost several gold galleons, and it was used for deadly potions.

"What evidence do you have to say it, Sherlock?"

"The hem of your skirt is still stained by a phosphorescent moss that only grows in the forest, near the Cruelthorn. You've covered the stain with a spell, but if I nullify it..." Sherlock raised his wand and Irene raised her hands in surrender.

"No need to get so angry, Sherlock, you and I are friends."

"I don’t remember this ever happened," Holmes said coldly, but Irene didn’t take it as offence and smiled flirtatiously.

"Maybe we can become good friends during these winter holidays. Why don’t come to see me at my family castle? We could have dinner together."

John didn’t like the predatory look Irene casted on the younger boy, but Sherlock was unimpressed.

"No thanks. First of all I’ll stay at Hogwarts during the holidays and then, as you noticed, I've hardly appetite."

"Maybe because you never eat the right foods."

It didn’t seem at all that the two were talking really about food and John liked less and less he conversation, and opened his mouth to retort, but Sherlock was faster again.

"I highly doubt that there is something at your house to my liking."

"As you wish" Irene took the blow with elegance and retired in good order, leaving only the two friends.

"What did you want to do with the wand?” Sherlock scolded him “Are you trying to get you expelled?"

"She started it!"

Sherlock rolled his eyes: "You know how Slytherins are: she was provoking, and you were about to fall into it."

John frowned: "Mycroft is a Slytherin."

"Exactly."

The Gryffindor laughed and for a moment he forgot about his troulbes.

"But seriously you’ll not go home this year?"

"No, my dad wrote to me to tell that my cousin Sherrinford will be at our Christmas dinner: he just got a job at the Ministry of Magic and will boast about it all the time, I have no desire to listen to him."

"Instead I regret having to stay here: it’s a lot of time since I saw Harriet and Clara, and Christmas has always been my favorite holiday, even if now I’ve grown up."

Thinking about the punishment he had received from his parents made him sad again; he got up, shaking the grass from the cloak, and headed for the castle.

"I'm sorry, Sherlock, but I’ll not be of much company during these holidays."

In other circumstances, John would have been very happy to spend all that time with his friend, to whom he had just learned to feel something more than just friendship. It was also his last year at Hogwarts, and John wasn’t keen at all on the idea of separating from Sherlock until his N.E.W.T., but at that time preferred to stay alone to lick his wounds.

Sherlock let him go away, then he sighed heavily and hunched his head between his shoulders, going to Rawenclaw’s dormitory with a slow pace: he had hoped for a totally different atmosphere.

John had been his best friend since the first year of Sherlock and his feelings for him slowly matured from a beautiful friendship to something much confused, until, in the summer between the previous year and the current, Sherlock understood to be in love with him.

John was at Hogwarts for the last year, and Sherlock had promised himself to find the courage to confess his feelings, and he had staked everything on the Christmas period, because it was John’s favorite, but he now no longer believed it was a good idea.

Molly, one of the last to leave the Castle to go home, ran to him.

"I saw you on the shores of the lake. So did you told him?"

Molly was the only one to which Sherlock had spoken of his feelings, asking her advice.

"I don’t think I will” Sherlock said with mournful voice “John is not really in the mood."

"Mood? What I have to hear” she sighed and put her hands on her hips “Sherlock Holmes, do you really like John Watson?"

"You know very well that it is so!" He replied, purple in the face.

"So you insist! You can’t give up at the first difficulty."

"But…"

"Make something amazing that will make him forget his troubles, and then confess. Now I have to go, but I want you to send me an owl to let me know how it went!"

"Something amazing..." Sherlock muttered to himself.

 

John didn’t see Sherlock at all during Christmas day: the Ravenclaw didn’t go to the Great Hall for breakfast and didn’t seem to be anywhere in the Castle.

John took advantage of the day of absolute calm to do homeworks for Potions (he had to recover from some bad grades) and spent most of the time in the library.

Sherlock wasn’t even there at dinner: maybe in the end he changed his mind and had gone home? If so, it was John’s fault, after all: those days he had been unapproachable. The only news that had cheered him a little was that Killty Riley hadn’t been able to go home: she was in confinement in the infirmary, covered with strange blue pustules of which no one could figure out the source.

He retired almost immediately in Gryffindor Tower, pronounced the password to the portrait of the Fat Lady, "Auror", entered the common room and stopped with a gaping jaw: the whole room was covered with a thin layer of ice and it is snowing from the ceiling, already for a while, judging by the layer of white blanket that covered chairs and tables, and that had melted into a big puddle of water near the fireplace.

And Sherlock was standing in the middle of that mess, his pale cheeks red from the cold and breath condensed into white clouds.

"W...  what the hell...?"

"Surprise!" the Ravenclaw said with a big smile. It wasn’t the first time that Sherlock sneaking in the Tower, because he always managed to deduce their password, but he had never done anything like this.

"What are you thinking?" John shouted, angry.

Sherlock's smile faded instantly: "Do-don’t you like it?"

"Oh, let's see: it seems that an avalanche has hit the common room of my House, and if anyone finds out, will blame me and hate me even more."

"You're the only Gryffindor left for the holidays and I..."

"There are ghosts around, and Peeves, and if he finds out, everyone will know in a second. Look, I don’t care how, but you’ll make disappear immediately this mess. I'm going out for a walk, and when I go back I want everything to be normal again.

John came out of the common room without looking back, so he did’t see Sherlock’s hearbroken face. Sherlock had thought to give John a thing that winter hadn’t brought with it: the snow, but apparently it was a stupid idea, and it made him only angry. Not only he couldn’t confess his feelings, John probably wouldn’t have spoken to him for who knows how long.

"Young man” the Fat Lady addressed, while John walked away down the hall “What kind of manners are those?"

"Leave me alone."

"Oh, I don’t think so."

The woman stepped through the other paintings, elbowing everyone and walked next to John.

"Stop! Do you hear me?"

"No."

"All right, you asked for it."

The painted woman plunged into a tapestry and moved it at John’s feet, causing him to stumble and fall to the ground.

"Ouch! Are you crazy?"

"Have I your attention now? Very good."

"What do you want from me?"

"I want you to go back and apologize immediately with Sherlock."

"Is it me the one who should apologize? He’s the one who had made a mess."

"It's just magic snow, it’ll disappear in an instant."

"Anyway, I don’t understand why he did it in the first place."

"It was a gift."

"A gift? For who?"

The painted woman widened her arms.

"For you, blockhead! Sherlock knows how much you like the snow and he spent the whole week studying the right spell to make it snow, just to make you smile, but you're so busy being in a bad mood that you don’t even want to hear what he had to say."

"I... I'm an idiot" John felt bad, as if he had just kicked a puppy.

"Go to apologize to him, otherwise tonight you’ll sleep on the floor in the hallway, password or not."

John didn’t need to be told twice: he came back, but Sherlock had already left the common room, having mad the snow disappear, as he had requested. He ran to Ravenclaw Tower and reached Sherlock just before he entered in his common room.

"Sherlock, wait for me."

"I have sorted everything out," the boy said without looking at him and without stopping.

"Wait, I beg you: you know I’m not able to solve the riddles to get into your Tower."

Sherlock stopped, but still didn’t turn. "Nobody has seen the spell I did, you’ll not have any problems."

"Actually your snowfall is a great spell and I was terribly ungrateful. And then, I bet it was you who sicken Kitty Riley, isn't it?"  
"She deserved it. It's nothing serious, however, she will recover soon."  
"Shit, Sherlock, forgive me. You did all this for me and I acted like an asshole."

Sherlock turned his head toward him, showing him a sad smile that made John feel more guilty than ever.

"It doens’t matter, John."

"Of course it does: I hurt the most important person of my life and I would pull a Stunning Spell on myself for that."

The young Ravenclaw's eyes widened.

"The... the most imp..."

Oops, John had said too much.

Or maybe not, he thought, seeing that Sherlock was blushing scarlet,  but his smile was bright again.

"Yes, well... I dind’t want to tell you like that, but I did it anyway: I like you, and not just as a friend. And you?"

"Actually tonight I just wanted to…” Sherlock muttered, redder than ever “To tell you the same thing."

"And I've ruined everything” John sighed “Would you allow me to fix it?"

"How?"

John waved his wand and made a sprig of mistletoe appear over their heads.

"Like that."


	20. Rainy

"Anyone want more pudding?" John asked to their guests.

"No thanks, Dad, I ate too much," his daughter Billie said, while clearing Becky's face with the towel; Alex, Billie’s husband, shook his head and it was useless to ask Sherlock, so John got up, wincing for his aching joints, and began to collect the dishes.

"I'll help" Alex said, and picked cutlery and glasses; in the kitchen he arranged the dishes in the dishwasher as if he used every day, even though it was the first time he saw that model of the appliance.

"You always do at home, isn’t it?" the former doctor asked.

"Yes”  Alex laughed “Billie is a disaster with manual labor, always drop everything."

"She was like that even as a child."

"I hear you" Billie sang from the living room, but there wasn’t animosity in her voice.

"I'm glad that you were able to come, despite all this rain."

"Thank you for inviting us: leaving the work behind for a while is good for both of us."

Becky, the daughter of Billie and Alex, was at the window door of the living room and looked disconsolately at heavy rain that drenched the windows; occasionally she sighed and small puffs of steam formed on the glass.

"I'm sorry, Becky” her grandfather said “I know I promised to take you to see the countryside, but I'm afraid it will rain also tomorrow."

"But I'm bored!" She protested.

"We will see things under a microscope” Sherlock suggested, as he put some wood log in the fireplace “first, when you walked in front of my study, I noticed that you looked at it with curiosity."

The little girl looked sideways at her mother, who nodded slightly, and only then said yes.

"We can look at leaves, vegetables, and even at your hair. Pity it isn’t the right season, otherwise I might catch a lizard and-"

"Sherlock, love” John interrupted “leaves and hair will be more than enough."

"But I was hoping that at least here there was snow. Becky has never seen it," the father said, seating the daughter on his lap.

"Now the climate has changed; it doesn’t snow here from... when, Sherlock?"

"I don’t know, I deleted it."

"You are always the same."

"If I wanted to remember the statistics on climate, I would have become a weatherman."

"It’s not only the weather! You forgot the name of half of our neighbors."

"They’re useless and boring people, why should I remember them?"

"Sherlock” John looked at him reproachfully “There's a little girl in the house, you should give a good example."

"In fact I'm doing this: it’s important to select the right companies from an early age."

"You fight like an old married couple" Alex broke in.

"But we’re married" Sherlock objected and John rolled his eyes.

"It was a joke," John said, ruffling his silver hair. Sherlock pulled his hand out of his head, but before he kissed his palm and then stood up, with some pain in the joints, too.

"Anyone want mulled wine?"

Billie accepted, while Alex shook his head; Becky made a huge yawn and her father decided it was time for her to go to sleep.

"Can granddad tell one of his stories?"

"Gladly," John said and went to the library: between the various adventures of Sherlock and him, there were also some light, almost funny, cases that didn’t involve corpses horribly mutilated, and therefore were suitable also for a small child.

Sherlock boiled the red wine with spices, filtered it and brought a glass to Billie, who meanwhile was sitting in the place of her daughter, at the window door wet from the rain.

"Be careful, it's very hot."

Billie accepted the glass and looked out.

"I saw the snow several times when I was young, I consider myself lucky for that."

Sherlock said nothing and sat down by the fire, moving the coals with the poker.

"The wine is very good indeed."

"I used my own personal mixture of spices, until I found the one John liked the most."

"Can I have some more?"

"Sure."

Billie drank in silence for a while, then turned to Sherlock.

"When I was about the age of Becky, I used to hate you."

Sherlock didn’t answer and was unperturbed.

"Dad was very different when he was at home with me and mom than when it was in your company” the woman went on “Don’t get me wrong, he has always been an attentive and loving father, he never failed in anything, he taught me to ride a bicycle without training wheels, helped me drawing, and, if I asked, he played with dolls with me, but every time the phone rang and he saw it was you calling, he... transformed” Billie shrugged “I don’t know how else to describe it. He rejuvenated literally under my eyes: his face was more relaxed, he straightened his back and he emanated a strong energy, but for the rest of the time he was... off, dull."

The girl put her empty glass on the table and hugged her knees.

"And I hated you because you were the one who made him so happy, only you, and not my mother. When John looked at you, he looked at the only love of his life: he never looked Mary like that. But I think he didn’t ever realize."

"No, probably not."

Billie chuckled: "God, in these things he has always been so blind."

Sherlock withdrew Billie’s empty glass, then sat back down.

"When did you stop hating me?"

"When I started elementary school, there was a meeting of all the parents and children: the principal and all the teachers spoke in turn; I wanted to go to the park and play, instead I was forced to sit there listening to things that didn’t interest me at all, and I was so disconsolate that I wanted to cry. Now, you may say that children make the great dramas of the little things, but at that moment it really seemed like a huge tragedy to me."

"No” Sherlock interrupted “I can understand: I wouldn’t have wanted to stay, too."

"I can imagine. Well, at one point I looked up at my father: he was looking out the window because two police patrols just passed along the street... and in that moment I knew. He was sad just like me, he didn’t want to be there, he wanted to be elsewhere, and it wasn’t a nice thing to see him so sad. I loved him and I didn’t want him to be sad, to be sad was a horrible thing, and if you were able to make him happy, it was fine to me."

"Please don’t tell him."

"Tell him what?"

"That you have hated me: your father would suffer."

"You've always worried about his happiness before anything else, right?"

"John has been for me a lot more than I could ever put into words," Sherlock murmured.

"Sherlock?"

"Yes?"

"I am happy that you are married."

"Thank you."

"Thanks for what?" John asked, entering the living room.

"Billie got me compliments for the mulled wine."

"Hey! Is there still some for me, too?"

"Sure. Take a glass and join us."


	21. Woolen

"Sherlock! Sherlock, where are you? There're boxes to close!" John shouted from the top of the stairs.

No answer: it was likely that his husband had wandered again to the bookstore to buy yet another manual about beekeeping. As if they didn’t have enough things to bring in their new cottage in Sussex.

But in the end John was happy that Sherlock had quickly found another interest besides crimes and police investigations.

The years began to show their weigh, especially for him, but also for the consulting detective; so, a few months before, they had talked seriously about retiring: Mrs. Hudson died a few years before and since then Baker Street hadn’t been the same again, Lestrade had retired and even Mycroft was peeling off progressively from work.

Now they had to move in a week, and there were still many things to put away, especially in his old room upstairs, which over the years had become a warehouse.

It was amazing the amount of things that people accumulated in a lifetime.

John opened a closet and separated the old clothes to be donated to some charity and those to be preserved; on the bottom of the closet he found an old travel bag that he didn’t remember having ever seen and that no one opened in years, judging from how much it was dirty and graying.

He opened the zip with some difficulty and frowned: there were folders of old papers now yellowed and faded, written in several languages that John didn’t know (probably from Eastern Europe) and an old sweater with white and black stripes, rust stained in several places, stored in a plastic bag.

"Wait a moment, this is mine!" John exclaimed as he pulled out the sweater from the bag and lifted it by the shoulders. He had purchased it shortly after his return from Afghanistan and then... it was just gone and he no longer had thought about it.

The former soldier sat cross-legged on the floor trying to remember when he had seen the sweater for the last time, and why it was in that old bag.

Certainly he had used it several times when he was living with Sherlock, but as he thought about, he hadn’t it seen since the fake suicide of the detective; but when he left Baker Street he was certain he had brought with him all his clothes, and that sweater wasn’t there.

He looked better at the alleged rust spots, running his fingers over them and realized that it wasn’t rust, but blood.

And he understood.

Sherlock had brought that sweater with him for the two years in which he was traveling around the world to dismantle Moriarty’s organization.

Since they had started their relationship as a couple, many years ago, there was a thing that Sherlock had always loved to do, and that he still did: when John sat on the couch, Sherlock would lie down with his head on his legs and face sunk in his sweater. The first few times, John had asked him, laughing, if the feeling of wool on the skin didn’t bothered him, but Sherlock had said no.

And now John could perfectly imagine what happened to the sweater: alone, in a country far away, maybe injured, Sherlock was clutching at it, to be strong and to silence his loneliness.

"Sherlock..." he murmured, gently stroking the coarse fabric.

John had no doubt about the depth of the love of Sherlock for him, it had always been one of the few certainties of his life, but the consulting detective had never been the one for big, romantic, movie-like gestures, or daily declarations of undying love. But, every now and then, suddenly, John discovered things like that: whispers, hints, little things which, however, made him fully remember the greatness of Sherlock’s feelings for him.

And John rediscovered to be in love with Sherlock like the first day.

 

The door of the ground floor closed with a bang, and John hurried to put away the sweater.

"John?"

"Upstairs!"

Sherlock leaned on the door of the room and looked at all the stuff scattered around.

"Uh, I removed from my mind that there were also these things to put away. I went to the library for a moment and the time flew and... "

John got up and hugged him tightly, kissing him on the neck, and Sherlock put his arms around his shoulders.

"What do I owe the honor of this hug? Oh…"

Sherlock had probably noticed that the old travel bag was misplaced, but he said nothing.

"Why? Do I need a reason to hug embrace my husband?" John muttered, sounding a bit gruff.

"No, absolutely no."

"Come on” he said then, patting him on the shoulder  “Help me: these boxes will not fill on their own."


	22. Powdery

"I’m going out," John said checking his hair one last time in the mirror.

"If you drink too much, take a taxi, I don’t like you being drunk alone at night."

John walked over to the couch, where Sherlock was lying in his meditative pose, and laid a kiss on the forehead.

"Sure, I'll control myself: after all tomorrow we have to make cookies for the charity Christmas party of Scotland Yard, and I have to be fit."

"Thinking about it: try to bring home a stomach or flu virus, so we can avoid this nuisance."

"Sherlock!" John admonished.

"It was just an idea.”

“Everyone brings something homemade to the party, and we will not be outdone."

He kissed him on his nose and went out: every two or three months, he went to a pub with some former comrades. The first few times he had thought to invite his boyfriend, but he knew perfectly well that Sherlock would be bored, or worse, would deduce embarrassing things about his friends. And besides, the consulting detective had never shown interest in the meetings.

John had seriously promised to drink little that night, knowing that the next day he had to make the cookies alone, as Sherlock’s help would have been marginal, and he didn’t want to knead cookies with a hangovers.

But then Erik Sandler, the devil take him, began to dig up some old drink contests, bragging that he always won, even if it wasn’t true, and John offered to debunk him instantly with a new contest.

Obviously other mates were excited by the idea, brought a bottle of vodka, and even improvised a bet with the other patrons of the pub, and at that point it was too late to back out. But then, what could possibly go wrong? At the end of the evening he would take a taxi, as suggested by Sherlock, and would come home safe and sound. He hadn’t calculated other contingencies.

More or less after five glasses of vodka each, the crowd around their table was grown and was cheering and betting; at one point, a girl, already quite tipsy and with a mortarboard askew on her head, put her hand on his shoulder.

"Hey, can I ask you a question? Are you are John Watson?"

"Yup, it’s me."

"I knew it: my friends didn’t believe it, but I recognized you from the pictures on the blog. I’m Christine" she said, laughing for no apparent reason.

"Nice to meet you."

"Tell me, how do you feel? Can you can still go on drinking?"

"Of course” John said “I’m still cold sober."

This was an exaggeration, but he was much better than Erik and Christine, just to say.

"Okay. Jenna” the girl said turning to a friend “We bet on him."

"Thank you," John laughed, preparing for another round.

"I'm here for my graduation party, so don’t let us lose our money!"

After a few glasses, Erik collapses with his head on the table, making John win the contest; his friends took him to triumph over their shoulder for a ride around the pub, and then people who had won the bet because of him, took some selfies with him. Among these there were Christine and her friends, who convinced him to wear the mortarboard.

After that, things became slightly confused, and finally John awoke on the landing of Baker Street, Sherlock shaking him by the shoulder.

Oh well, at least he had managed to take a taxi and give the address to the taxi driver.

"And you said you'd been drinking a little," the detective said.

"Don’t shout, please."

"I'm whispering."

"And don’t turn on the light."

 

The next day John emerged from the bedroom in the afternoon, still groggy despite a refreshing shower, and went into the kitchen dangling.

"Don’t say anything," he muttered in the direction of his boyfriend.

Sherlock, sitting in his armchair with the laptop on his legs, chuckled.

On the table they were arranged some ingredients (flour, sugar, eggs), which made him remember that they had to make cookies.

"Where's the recipe? I wanna finish a.s.a.p."

"It’s attached to the refrigerator, but I’m not convinced: the doses seem inaccurate and not  proportionate, so I'm looking for a new one."

"That's my computer," John remarked.

"I don’t know where mine is."

"In our room."

"Too far. By the way, you have new messages on the blog."

"Look at them, would you? Now I don’t want to."

John pulled the recipe from the refrigerator and set it on the table.

"Let's see... what else is missing? Milk, butter, ginger... do we use fresh or powdered one? Admitted to have any kind of ginger in the house."

Sherlock had stopped typing on the keyboard, and didn’t answer, but John didn’t mind, busy to arrange the ingredients on the table.

"And then? Yeast, nuts... WHAT THE HELL...?"

John was again bent over the recipe and almost didn’t notice Sherlock, who reached behind him, grabbed the bag of flour and threw it on his head. John breathed in the fine white powder and was seized with a violent fit of coughing; he wiped his eyes and shook the flour form his hair, but the more waved his arms, the more he created a powdery cloud that made him cough louder.

"Are you crazy? Why did you do that?" He shouted when he managed to recover.

"Traitor!" Sherlock shouted, pulling a handful of flour from the table and centering him on the face: John’s reflections was still dull.

"Traitor? What on earth are you talking about?"

"Do you dare to deny it?"

"To deny WHAT?" John shouted in turn, beging to get seriously angry: there was flour spilled everywhere, he had it even under clothing and Sherlock was babbling nonsense.

The detective marched into the living room, picked up the laptop and turned it to John.

"I'm talking about this!"

The message was from Christine, who had posted on Instagram the photo taken the night before, where you could see John with the mortarboard on his head surrounded by girls. The tag of the photo read: "I made him wear the hat."

An innocent joke, as innocent had been the night before, and he couldn’t believe that Sherlock had jumped to conclusions so wrong without even stopping to ask him.

John grabbed the first thing that was on the table - the jar of sugar - unscrewed it and threw it on his face in turn. Sherlock closed his eyes, but opened his mouth in amazement and the effect was definitely comic, enough to make John smile, even though he was still angry.

"That'll teach you! Last night absolutely nothing happened! That girl knows my blog, yesterday she graduated and wanted a photo, but you, my dear drama queen, you always have to set on a tragedy."

Sherlock ran his hands through his hair, which had taken on a strange grayish color, and blew sugar towards John.

"You know I don’t like other people touching you. Why did not you say anything last night?"

"You know very well why, you idiot” John replied, throwing him another pile of flour “I was drunk, I had already forget everything."

"Stop to throwl flour at me!"

"You started it!"

"Do you want war?"

"Be careful what you ask for, Sherlock, I've been at war and-"

As he spoke, Sherlock rubbed a powdery hand on his face, causing him to sneeze like a madman, then John used the heavy artillery: grabbed Sherlock by the shirt and slid an egg inside the collar, then pulped it with a slap.

Sherlock yelped at the cold feeling.

"It’s not fair!"

"I'm sorry, honey, but you started this for no reason!"

The two continued to throw each other handfuls of sugar and flour, and occasionally eggs, with some satisfaction and a few laughs, especially when the eggs landed on them, until John slipped on the floor become mealy and slammed his head against one of the lockers, producing a hollow sound.

"Ouch... I'm too old for this shit" he groaned sitting up and rubbing his forehead. Great, as if he didn’t have enough headache from the hangover already.

Sherlock knelt beside him and handed him a bag of frozen peas.

"We got caught in it."

"Christ, the next time try to ask me what happened. Do you really thought I had done something with that girl?"

"No, but... that tag me brought back bad memories... and I could have been a little impulsive. Maybe."

"You say?" John quipped, raising an eyebrow.

They were covered with white dust and yellowish yolks, and it would take a week to clean up the kitchen, and the whole situation was so ridiculous that John couldn’t help but laugh.

 

Eventually they came to the Scotland Yard party with a tin of Danish cookies.

John was a bit ashamed, but Sally accepted them with obvious relief.

"Thank you for not having cooked anything, I was afraid you would have poisoned us all."


	23. Wintertime

"I love winter: it’s my favorite season," Victor said.

Sherlock emerged from his fortress of blankets to blow his nose and grunted his disapproval.

"Oh, come on, you have only a slight cold, you're not going to die."

"So you say," the boy said hoarsely.

"When you're healed, I'll show you the delights of winter" Victor promised.

"I don’t think that there's anything at the moment that would delight me."

 

"So, what are these delights of winter?" Sherlock muttered a few nights later: it wasn’t convinced at all that he would appreciate whatever his boyfriend had in mind.

Victor smiled and put down the book he was studying, prepared a hot chocolate with honey and cinnamon, sat on the sofa with Sherlock, covered both with a plaid, and they spent the evening kissing and watching the snow falling down.

It was pleasant, against all odds.

And for three years, the winter ended up to be Sherlock’s favorite season, too: Victor was waiting anxiously Christmas Eve to decorate the tree, he cooked cakes and desserts, laughed at the silliest things and put up with the sweet teasing from Sherlock who said that he seemed still a child.

But, to tell the truth, Sherlock liked also Victor's demeanor, a bit naive and dreamy, and, at heart, he wanted it to last between them.

Unfortunately it didn’t happen, indeed it ended rather badly, and Victor, with his smiles and scented chocolate, packed his bags and left early one morning, without even leaving a goodbye note.

Sherlock decided to not cancel the ruinous experience and kept it in a small room of his Mind Palace for the chance, very unlikely but not impossible, that one day he had another companion: since the steps he had taken with Victor had led to end of thier relationship, they weren’t to be repeated.

  
  
*

 

But now, many year after, Sherlock is facing a dilemma, because he and John got together on a rainy Friday in early December, and John seems to want to do exactly the same things that Victor was used to do during wintertime: he passes in front of a shop window and says that their tree needs new decorations, and when it gets cold, he wants to make eggnog, mulled wine and spicy chocolate.

Sherlock is distressed.

John is more important than Victor was.

He loves John madly, completely, and doesn’t want to lose him, but he fears that this will happen, if he repeats the same steps of the past. His relationship with John can’t and must not be a photocopy of the one with Victor, especially as regards the bitter end.

"I love winter” John said cheerfully, when the first snowfall tinges the city with a white cover “And you?"

"Not really," Sherlock replied, because winter brings to mind the failure of the only other human relationship he had.

"Oh... okay."

John's smile fades a bit and Sherlock doesn’t understand where he went wrong: the question of John assumed only two possible answers: yes or no. "Yes" had already been experimented with Victor and it was not good, but "no" seemed to have saddened his companion. What can be done if both answers are wrong?

"Do we order a take away?" John asks, drawing him from his thoughts.

"Didn’t you say you wanted to cook you something?"

"I don’t want it anymore, I have no idea what to prepare."

"Chinese will do" Sherlock replies, but continues to look for an error that he can’t see in his answer.

 

A few nights later, John is making a chocolate with honey and cinnamon (Why, why that recipe?) and sits on the couch. Sherlock is standing at the window with his violin under his chin, but he’s not playing anything, so, after a while, John taps his hand on the couch.

"Why don’t you come sit next to me?"

"No."

That road would lead to a blanket to share, the two of them watching the snow and a brief period of happiness, but then everything would go to hell, as has already happened with Victor, and Sherlock absolutely can’t let that happen again.

The cup is placed firmly on the coffee table and John recovers his coat.

"Okay, I'll go out for a drink at the pub."

Yet that's exactly what is happening, and Sherlock has no idea why.

 

John comes back a few hours later, go directly to his room on the second floor, and is startled to find Sherlock sat in front of his door with his head resting on his knees.

"I don’t know what to do or what I have to say to you... I don’t know..." he whispers softly, as if the fact of not knowing something is a serious cause for shame.

John sighs and sits down on the steps next to him.

"You know, when we got together, I thought we'd do things together, in fact. But you refuse my every approach and you're so far away these days that I thought you had changed your mind about us."

Sherlock raises his head up and looks at him with eyes full of horror.

"No! I wanna be with you, John, I want it more than anything else, more than... catching a serial killer."

John's expression softens.

"So much?"

"Yup."

"Then why...?” the former soldier sighs frustrated “Why don’t you want to do something with me? I only ask you to drink a hot chocolate sat next to each other on the couch. Is it so terrible?"

"No."

"I will not ask to…” John clears his voice and gestures “to go further, if now you don’t feel ready. It's just that, if we are together, I wanna feel you closer."

"It's not that” Sherlock confesses, running a hand through his hair “I already did it once with a guy when I was at the University: cuddles, chocolate, watching the snow."

"And didn’t you like it?"

"No, I did it."

"So where's the problem?" John looks at him with bewilderment: he really doesn’t understand.

"With Victor it didn’t end well, so if now I follow the same steps with you, it will end the same way” Sherlock sighs and torments his lips with his teeth, distressed “I don’t want to lose you."

"Oh, Sherlock” John crawls next to him and strokes his hair “Sherlock, human relationships aren’t mathematical equations, they don’t work like that: in a relationship there's no guarantees at all that doing the same things leads to the same results, because many different factors come in play."

"Which one?"

"For example the attraction” John says putting a chaste kiss on Sherlock’s lips, that has the power to immediately make Sherlock’s pupils to dilate “Then chemistry, affinity. You're different from the boy you were once and, above all, I’m not this Victor. Also, I don’t think that your story was over because of the nice things that you had shared together, but because of your differences."

Sherlock hides his face against John’s neck.

"I'm terrified of losing you," he whispers.

John hugged him and kissed him on a temple.

"Not doing anything with me is not a good move to keep me, though. Listen to what we’ll do” he lays two fingers under Sherlock’s chin to make him raise his head “If there is a problem, if we feel that things aren’t working like before, we will talk about and find a solution together. What do you say?"

"It looks like a brilliant plan" Sherlock replied, returning to smile, his heart feeling lighter.

"Very well, now that we've cleared this, can I drink a hot chocolate with my boyfriend?"

"Yes."


	24. Wet

It's all so new for him, so strange, so wet, that for a moment Sherlock is overwhelmed by the sensations: John’s tongue drawing lines on his chest, his doctor hands curled possessively on his sides, the absolute lack of control over his own body, which seems to have a life of its own and reacts to John’s touch, the sweat, his penis, dripping pre come, caught between their bodies. It’s almost too much.

His body gets stiff and tense, the heart speeds up the beats, and a weak moan of anxiety makes its way between his closed lips.

John notices it immediately, of course: in this situation he's the attentive and observant one, while Sherlock is completely at lost, perhaps for the first time in his life.

The doctor settles one last, gentle kiss in the middle of his chest, lifts on elbows and sinks a hand in his dark hair, wrapping a perfect curl around a finger, and looks at him with the smile of someone who knows better, while Sherlock’s breath is short, he’s damp, his skin is reddened (god, he’s a true wreckage), and for a moment he thinks of pushing John away, crawling under the bed and never getting out.

"Do you want to stop?" John asks, nuzzling his nose against Sherlock’s.

"No!" Sherlock answers quickly, because he doesn’t want to disappoint him, and he curses himself for not being able to hide his discomfort.

"Sherlock, I mean it: we can stop at any moment. You should like this, it shouldn't to be a form of torture."

"I like it” Sherlock swears, and he’s sincere “I really do, it's just that..."

"It's a lot to you, I know, but you're fighting it," John whispers, sweet and reassuring, without hurrying to explain what Sherlock is fighting (his emotions, the whole experience).

"You're fighting it, and this is not good” he says again, slowly “Indulge in it, let it go and stop thinking."

"This is almost impossible for me," Sherlock chuckles breathlessly.

"Maybe I can help you in this," John aswers, pulling slighly his hair, and Sherlock’s head tilts automatically backwards, giving him full access to his neck, which John fills with kisses and scarlet hickeys, murmuring sweet nonsense, and slowly it gets better.

Oh, the heat, the damp of their bodies, the desire of John is still all there, but now the anxiety eases into a negligible background noise. He stops thinking for real, surrendering to the physical side of himself, he closes his eyes, moves his head trying find blindly John’s lips.

The former soldier crushed his mouth on his with hunger, with the purest passion, before remembering that his man is a virgin, and this is his first experience, and then slows down, causing an annoyed moan from Sherlock.

"You're fighting it too," Sherlock muttered, almost outraged

"Not really” John chuckles “I'm holding back, because I don’t want to act like an animal, not tonight" The winks and his smile full of promise future are sufficient to remove the momentary pout of Sherlock.

"Kiss me," the detective asks, and John pleases him, taking possession again of his mouth, as he rubs on him, and his penis, hard and hot, drips between them, and now everything is much wetter and hectic than before, and so, so, so perfect.

Sherlock drags his feet against the mattress, arches his back searching for more points of contact, and their erections glide and rub on each other and they both let go a long moan.

"J-John..."

"Fuck" the doctor pants, moving in synchrony with Sherlock, but imposing himself a gentle rhythm.

"Don’t hold back, John," he implores him, taking his face in his hands.

"Christ, Sherlock, you can’t talk to me like that, you have no idea of the effect you have on me," John sighs weakly.

"Or maybe I know very well” Sherlock murmured, stroking his ears with his thin fingers “I want all of you, even the animal."

John responds with a growl, turning away Sherlock’s hands from his face and locking his wrists above his head, presses against his body with total abandon, and Sherlock interlace his long legs around his waist.

"Let yourself go" John orders, his voice surprisingly firm, and Sherlock's whole body is crossed by a strong shiver, and comes, violently, suddenly, while John rubs himself on the damp warmth of his abdomen in a frantic pace, and follows him after a few moments.

John lets go Sherlock’s wrists, and the brunette immediately traps him in his embrace, burying his face in his neck with a satisfied moan; John kisses his sweaty forehead and rubs his face against Sherlock’s, but after some moments of peace, he taps a finger on his arm.

"Sherlock, let me go."

"Hmm," moans the detective, annoyed, without moving.

"I have to get something from the bathroom."

"Hmm," he mumbles again, and this time accompanies his denial with a bite on John’s collarbone.

"Sherlock, if we don’t clean up, we’ll regret it."

"In a minute" Sherlock mutters, who ha no intention of loosening the octopus grip around John’s body.

"And I believed that you disdain certain aspects of sex."

"No."

It’s wet, it’s slippery, it’s a huge mess, and it's the most beautiful thing Sherlock has ever felt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that we're done (yes, I know that an Advent calendar has 25 days, but it’s impossible for me to write tomorrow).  
> It wasn’t easy: it was the first time I wrote something so long in a language different from Italian, I didn’t like all prompts, probably with more time I would write some of these stories differently, but overall it was fun to get out of my comfort zone: I wrote faster, with less mightily, and I also wrote about characters I don’t use, so I'm glad I did.  
> Thank you all for reading and commenting, I wish you happy holidays!  
> Love you all.


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